


The Grim Watch

by skyrat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Art, Bisexual Remus Lupin, Bisexual Sirius Black, Bring Back Black, But focus is on Sirius and Remus, Canon Divergence, Canon relationships hinted at in background, Depressed Remus Lupin, Fanart, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Get Together, Grief/Mourning, Humor, Illustrated, Jealousy, M/M, Order of the Phoenix missions, Pining, Protective Sirius Black, Romance, Sirius is dominant POV, Slow Build, The Trio meddles, Time Travel, multiple POVs, so much pining, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:56:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 61,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7424563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyrat/pseuds/skyrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody warned Sirius how awkward coming back from the dead could be.</p><p>In exchange for saving him, Hermione gave Sirius only one instruction: “We can’t interfere,” she insisted. “If anyone finds out you’re alive before the right time it will ruin everything.” Too bad that Sirius Black was never very good at respecting rules. </p><p>Of course, if he had followed the rules, he wouldn't have discovered that Remus Lupin has apparently taken his death rather badly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Stake-Out Commences

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Genuinelies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Genuinelies/gifts).



> \- This story is utterly Genuinelie’s fault. She gave me a very detailed prompt request, and I said “No way, I could never write that” and then I stewed about it for about a week and accidentally started writing. Next thing I knew the ‘short fic’ I started for her was over 150 pages long. Whoops….  
> \- I took a bit of creative license in my interpretation of how time-turners work (although to be fair, the ‘rules’ about them I broke didn’t seem to actually be described in the books, I think it’s stuff JK Rowling explained post publication.) Also, the premise of this plot is pretty much hinged on taking the portrayal of time-turner use in the books quite literally. In other words, Hermione is only ever shown using one to go back in time, and then she ends up living out the extra time it bought her until she catches up with the point where she went backwards. I think it’s kind of assumed/inferred you could also use one to go forward, but since it’s never actually shown (in the main books, I don’t keep up with the stuff JK posts on Pottermore, so I’m not taking into account any side canon stuff) that gave us the idea of how difficult and complicated it would be to deal with backwards-only time-travel, and this story explores that.  
> \- Because of the plot it takes a little while for Remus and Sirius to start interacting face-to-face, but don’t worry I promise there will be lots of that in upcoming chapters.  
> \- This story covers several months of time, and will pass Sirius’s birthday in the process, which is why at one point he mentions being 36 but later says 37.  
> 

Hermione was coming at Harry with _that look_ on her face. The one that usually said _‘There is a problem,’_ and _‘I’m about to say something unpleasant’_ and _‘I don’t want to upset you but I’m going to do it anyway.’_

“I haven’t been bossing around any house elves,” he said defensively, hoping to head off whatever complaint she was about to lob at him. “Not today, anyway,” he added under his breath.

“What? No, of course you haven’t.” The determined set to her frown shifted slightly, into a more bemused expression. “You know better.”

“Yeah, I do,” Harry confirmed. His eyes slid over to Ron. Maybe whatever was wrong wasn’t actually his fault. Hermione and Ron had been butting heads a lot more often lately, so the chances that Ron was the source of her annoyance were decent.

Ron shrugged, and raised his eyebrows in a silent signal of _‘Don’t look at me, mate, I haven’t done anything.’_

“Oh, stop fretting, this isn’t about anything like that,” Hermione huffed with a roll of her eyes. “Although I can’t help noticing that you haven’t been wearing those S.P.E.W. badges I gave you. It wouldn’t kill you to help me advertise, you know. But that’s besides the point.”

“Ah, so there _is_ a point,” said Ron.

“Of course there’s a point!”

“Well, get on with it then,” said Ron. “And get to it so that you can help me finish this potions essay. I still have to come up with another three inches of filler on the history of dittany use and I’m at a complete loss.”

“I’m not doing your homework for you.”

“I didn’t ask you to do it _for_ me. Just _help_. Like….maybe underline all the bits in the textbook I missed that could fill up three inches on dittany.”

“That’s doing your homework for you. Maybe you should go ask _Lavender_.”

“Sod off,” muttered Ron. He hunched back over his essay and made a point of not looking at her.

“Um, so what’s wrong?” asked Harry.

The _look_ came back with a vengeance. “Well…” said Hermione reluctantly. “ _You_ , actually.”

“Me?”

“Well, yes,” she said. “I’m getting a bit concerned, honestly.”

“What have I done?” asked Harry suspiciously.

Hermione put her hands up in a placating gesture. “Nothing!” she said quickly. “It’s not anything you’ve done. It’s more of a matter of _been_.”

“I’ve been fine,” said Harry.

“No,” said Hermione. “You really haven’t.”

“Yes, I have,” insisted Harry. He nudged Ron. “Haven’t I? Back me up here.”

Ron looked up and exchanged a secretive glance with Hermione that Harry really didn’t like the look of.

“Er, yeah. Harry’s been fine,” said Ron in a voice that clearly betrayed I-don’t-actually-agree-with-you-but-I’ll-say-whatever-you-want-because-you’re-my-best-mate.

“I have,” Harry repeated, feeling that Ron’s assurance was definitely not compelling enough.

“You’ve been looking peaky lately.”

“Well of course I have. We’re doing N.E.W.T. levels. And apparition lessons. And the quidditch team’s been a mess lately, and it’s _my_ responsibility to try and keep it together. I’m exhausted. Everyone starts looking peaky in sixth year.”

“You’ve been looking peaky in a manic-obsessive way. Not in the usual overworked way,” she elaborated.

“No I haven’t.”

Hermione just leveled him with one of her patented I-know-better-than-you-so-why-are-you-arguing-with-me looks.

“I just thought you should know that you haven’t seemed yourself lately. And I’ve been worried,” she sighed.

“Well I’m not sure exactly _who_ you think I’ve seemed like, if not me, but I can assure you that I am in fact still one hundred percent Harry. And you don’t have to worry.”

“Your obsession with stalking Draco is getting a bit out of hand,” she pressed. “It isn’t healthy.”

“I am _not_ obsessed with stalking Draco!” Harry spluttered. “I’m obsessed with _stopping Lord Voldemort_. It’s not my fault that Draco happens to be a key aspect of that problem.”

“I know, I know,” Hermione agreed. “Everything you’ve told us about that makes sense. We agree that something fishy is going on with Draco. You’re just letting it consume you so much. I can’t help thinking that you’re mainly using it as a distraction because you’re still upset over…you know. _What happened_.”

By now Ron had quietly shut his potions textbook and was glancing uncomfortably between Harry and Hermione. At the words ‘ _what happened_ ’ he and Hermione exchanged another significant look that Harry had been frequently catching on both of their faces. The one that said: _‘I feel extremely sorry for you and don’t know what to say.’_

He _hated_ that look. Harry found himself wishing that Hermione had been targeting him with a rant about house elf inequality after all.

He felt his face go stony, as was his usual reaction to any reference to his godfather’s untimely death. He simultaneously was grateful that his friends always sidestepped explicitly saying the words ‘Sirius died’ and being frustrated that they always edged around the topic without directly mentioning it, like they had to walk on eggshells around Harry because he couldn’t handle it.

(He was even more frustrated by the fact that he sort of felt like he actually _couldn’t_ handle it. Deep down he still felt like if he refused to acknowledge Sirius’s death it would somehow cease to be as real.)

“I’m fine,” he just stiffly repeated for the umpteenth time.

“You’re not,” Hermione insisted. “But that’s okay. You know that right? I just wish there was something we could do.”

“Well there _isn’t_ ,” said Harry bitterly. “There isn’t anything that anyone can do. He’s _dead_.”

It was the first time he’d said the words aloud in months. They burned like acid on his tongue.

“And I can handle it,” he lied. “I’m _fine_.”

* * *

For the first time in his life, Remus Lupin was grateful for his condition. It gave him a shield he’d never expected to need. As the days slipped by, putting more and more space between _now_ and the aftermath of _the battle_ (there was no need for him to specify which one in his own mind, for no other single confrontation could compare to the devastating impact of that day in the Department of Mysteries,) Remus felt himself rapidly shattering. He tried to carry on as normal. He was used to hardship, he constantly reminded himself. He’d never planned on being happy. He’d known since early childhood that he could not expect to lead a normal satisfying life. The things he wanted simply weren’t ever going to be on the table for him, so what was the point of feeling sorry for himself now? Life was just playing out the way he always knew it would. There was a war on and in the grand scheme of things he was utterly unimportant. He had to persevere and keep fighting for everyone else.

All the logic and determination in the world though didn’t seem to stop the very air from feeling like broken glass as he tried to breathe. No matter how many mantras he recited to himself, his food felt like glue when he tried to swallow it. Sleeping felt like dying, only it was worse really, because if he died Remus could at least hope there might be a chance he’d see Sirius again, in some form or another. Instead all he could look forward to were guilt ridden nightmares, where he watched his best friend die over and over again, sometimes replaying history, other times in new inventive ways, the only constant being that it always felt like _his fault_.

He was losing weight (not that he had much to spare,) and no one noticed. His eyes were becoming increasingly bloodshot, the sickly chartreuse and violet shadows beneath them more pronounced, and no one noticed. His hands had developed a rather annoying tremble that hadn’t used to be there, but no one commented on it. It was terribly convenient, really, that everyone had grown accustomed to him looking haggard and frayed. God bless lycanthropy.

The full moon, which had once been the source of all his worst nightmares, transformed into a sanctuary; it was only in wolf form that he could escape the constant torture of his thoughts. It was a reprieve from the _What Ifs_.

_What if he’d been paying closer attention to Sirius in the battle._

_What if he’d gotten in the way of Bellatrix._

_What if he’d used a forbidden curse before the Death Eaters got a chance to hurt anyone._

_What if he’d remembered to take the wolfsbane potion the night Sirius showed up at Hogwarts._

_What if he’d been there the night James and Lily died._

_…What if he’d actually told Sirius how he felt about him._

The inside of his head had become his own personal torture device. Transforming into a mindless slavering beast was its own kind of hell, but the reprieve from his guilt and grief was a welcome respite. Ripping himself apart physically was less painful than facing the battlefield inside his mind.

It scared him when he caught himself thinking this way. Embracing lycanthropy was truly a sign that he was finally losing himself. His sanity.

He began to trust himself less. Not that he had ever trusted himself completely, how could he when he completely lost control on a periodic basis? But before he’d felt fairly confident that he was in command during the other twenty-some days of the month. Now though…with dangerous thoughts creeping into his mind, and the waxing moon inviting feelings of relief instead of dread, Remus was afraid that he no longer had control over the wolf. It was instead gaining the upper hand over him.

So he stayed away from the others to make sure no one got hurt. He didn’t even bother to make excuses for why he was avoiding people—it never occurred to him that anyone would notice. He hadn’t allowed himself to get especially close to anyone since the Marauders had been torn apart.

Well, not until Sirius had come back into his life, but that hardly counted, did it? Because he wasn’t avoiding Sirius, Sirius was—

He couldn’t even really think it.

His throat closed up and his eyes burned and the unformed word _‘dead’_ was usually eclipsed by _‘hold it together Remus, you’re not the only one who’s lost someone, that’s how wars go and this is just how life is.’_

Often followed by the equally painful thought, _‘he wasn’t exactly yours to lose, anyway.’_

Yes, it was much easier to melt into the oblivion of a full moon than to dwell too hard on _that_.

* * *

She was just researching horcruxes. That was all. Really. Her only agenda.

But really. It would have been remiss of her to not be very thorough in her research, wouldn’t it? Hermione reasoned that it was perfectly logical that information pertinent to Voldemort’s schemes might be found in other, less obvious sources of information. How was she supposed to get any clues to his horcruxes if she was afraid to check out all of the dark magic sources that she could gain access to?

Not being thorough in gathering information never sat well with Hermione. She couldn’t abide by sloppy research. She was just being a responsible investigator.

That was _all_.

If she just so happened to find any clues about mysterious veils or resurrecting people who had vanished…well. That would just be a funny coincidence, wouldn’t it?

She certainly wasn’t _looking_ for those things.

She just…wasn’t opposed to taking in some extra information that she might find while searching for those horcruxes.

Right.

That was exactly what she was doing. And sneaking into black market bookstores in Knockturn Alley and breaking open locked cabinets was obviously a necessary course of action to fulfill her purpose. Where else would she be expected to find information relevant to the inner workings of the darkest wizard who ever lived? She’d already exhausted every book in Hogwarts’s library, including the restricted section. This was the logical place to look next for clues, and definitely had nothing to do with a rumor she’d accidently overheard two Slytherin first years whispering about how the estate of a particularly notorious illegal necromancer was about to go up for auction and thus several banned books were going to come onto the market and were being stored in this very bookshop.

She was doing worse than just breaking school rules right now; she was acting like a _criminal_. And it was really a sign that everything in the wizarding world was going to hell in a hand basket that this didn’t particularly bother her. She was feeling much guiltier about the fact that she hadn’t told Harry or Ron what she was up to. She _almost_ had, but at the last minute had made up a story about how she needed to borrow Harry’s invisibility cloak so that she could sneak into the potions cupboard to pilfer some ingredients to make a draught for staying up all night so she could study. She told herself that she’d left her best friends out of it because it was easier for a single person to avoid getting caught than three. In actuality, she just hadn’t wanted to get Harry’s hopes up if her plan didn’t yield any results.

She was glad she’d come alone though. Navigating Knockturn Alley was considerably more precarious than sneaking around the school. She very nearly set off booby-trapped alarms no less than four times. She was almost certain that adding any additional collaborators to this scheme would have only resulted in one of them stumbling into being apprehended in some extremely unpleasant manner.

Once she had liberated the stack of rare and unsavory books from their holding cell, Hermione (very, very carefully,) settled down on the floor to sort through them.

Some of them she immediately dropped into a discard pile. No matter how much Sirius was missed, she was fairly certain that no one would be very keen for him to make a reappearance via any means found in a book called _How to Animate an Inferius in Ten Easy Steps_. Nor did the _Field Guide to Foraging for Common Graveyard Pestilence_ seem especially useful. Soon she had whittled the stack down to only a few especially fragile and ancient looking texts.

She very nearly overlooked the second to last book. It was thinner than the others, and while most of the stack had had their titles boldly displayed in (sometimes flaking) gilt, this volume was discreetly labeled in modest black text. It proclaimed: _Understanding the Void_.

The spine creaked as she opened its brittle pages.

 _It is a common misconception_ , she read, _that the path from the living realm to the Underworld is a direct one, which may be traversed efficiently. In actuality, the two existences are separated by a wide gulf. This gulf is filled with a noxious atmosphere of diaphanous mist, the exact composition of which has never been determined due to its inhospitality to life. Were one to attempt to venture into the gulf, the combination of extreme cold and unbreathable atmosphere would paralyze the subject before a sample could be obtained and analyzed. While this atmosphere makes an immutable barrier to the living, it does not impede the progress of the deceased, as they have already departed their corporal forms and thus have no dependency on air or temperature. Theories abound that this chasm consists of primordial leftovers from the creation of the world, or that its invention had a more deliberate purpose of impeding travel between the realms. Throughout time several portals have been discovered or constructed…._

Hermione caught her breath and flipped ahead several pages. She found a series of engravings, one of which looked eerily similar to the crumbling stone arch and tattered veil that Sirius had fallen through.

With unsteady hands, she griped the book a little tighter and continued to read.

_Contrary to expectation, death is not instantaneous upon entering the void. Due to the immediate extreme temperature drop it is possible for a body to be preserved in a cryogenic stasis. This preservation is unfortunately short lived, as the severe conditions are corrosive and will eventually break down a body beyond the possibility of resuscitation. Generally speaking, a living creature could last approximately one full lunar cycle before the damage becomes irreversible._

“Oh Merlin,” Hermione whispered to herself. “Sirius didn’t die immediately after falling through.”

 _One Lunar Cycle_.

Sirius might not have died when he first fell through…but he was certainly dead now. It had been eight months since the battle. If it had been possible to save Sirius from the veil, they’d already missed their chance.

Hermione turned the pages quicker, her heart thudding as she rapidly scanned the pages.

And… _there_. There it was.

Spells.

Spells for pulling someone out of the gulf.

Spells that would have saved Sirius—if she’d only had this book eight months ago.

_Spells that are utterly useless to her now._

…Unless….

Her mind racing a mile a minute, Hermione pulled out a blank notebook and began to copy.

* * *

Apparently the whole people-not-noticing thing had been short lived. All of the sudden it seemed like _everyone_ was noticing.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were constantly staring at him.

Molly Weasley was constantly staring at him.

Tonks was constantly staring at him, although that might have had something to do with the fact that Molly Weasley was also staring at her, and in particular was often letting her gaze drift between himself and Tonks and then back to him. Yeah, Tonks had probably noticed that.

It was making him uncomfortable.

Although not as uncomfortable as being under Snape’s sudden scrutiny was making him.

“Might I remind you,” Severus said nastily, cornering Remus one evening after a meeting, “that the wolfsbane potion is _exceedingly_ difficult and time consuming to brew. I do not appreciate having my efforts wasted.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about Severus,” Remus lied. “Your efforts are not being wasted.”

(As far as Remus was concerned they weren’t: the hellebore growing in his window box was getting a nice boost from all the cups of potion he’d been emptying over it. He should probably tell Pomona Sprout about wolfsbane’s apparent fertilizer potential.)

Snape’s sallow brow creased. “I also do not appreciate _dishonesty_ ,” he hissed. “But I’m not sure what else I should expect from the likes of _you_. See that you take the potion _Lupin._ ” With that he strode off, his black robes billowing dramatically behind him.

(A little too dramatically, really, Lupin had always suspected that Snape had put an enchantment on his robes to increase their impact.)

Remus would have been annoyed by the entire encounter, if things like ‘being annoyed’ still reached him. He was feeling a bit too emotionally flat though for mild annoyances to register. He was feeling too emotionally flat for much of anything to register.

What was the point, really?

He was fairly certain that his entire life was probably some sort of cosmic joke. He’d been cursed by the werewolf bite so young he hadn’t been allowed to have a proper childhood. That had been depressing, but was somewhat redeemed, when he finally made it to school and not only managed to make friends, but friends who miraculously didn’t mind his condition. Friends that became so crucially important to his happiness that the very idea of losing just one of them would wreck him. And so of course (how had he ever expected otherwise) he’d lost _all_ of them. And just when he’d adjusted to functioning with that devastation the universe saw fit to toss one of them back to him—the one that meant a bit more to him than just _friend_. The one that made his heart stutter when he grinned conspiratorially at him. The one he’d been meaning to confess to for years now, but there just never seemed to be a good time, because Remus was afraid that revealing _that_ truth would cause the conspiratorial grins to fade, the friendly shoulder slaps to abort in mid-air, hands hovering awkwardly as Sirius stumbled over how uncomfortable Remus now made him…. Remus had stupidly thought that that would be the worst feeling. But he had been _so wrong_ , because now he would give anything to see that discomfort flash across Sirius’s features. He’d even settle for outright disgust, because seeing any emotion at all on Padfoot’s face would be better than this stark reality where Padfoot no longer existed.

What was the point in letting anything reach him when the universe was obviously determined to cause him only pain? Even the good parts had just been setting him up for a harder fall. He simply didn’t have it in him anymore to keep playing that game.

Staying out of the game though depended on staying away from people. Which was growing increasingly difficult.

For the past few months he’d had no barrier to stop him from skulking out of meetings before they were quite over. If he stayed shut in for weeks at a time no one bothered to come looking for him. If he took a little longer than necessary coming back from Order missions, no one called him out on it. It was a perfect arrangement, really.

Suddenly though, it seemed like he couldn’t even slip into the loo without someone accosting him.

“Remus, dear!” The voice that he had come to associate with the greatest sense of dread interrupted his escape to his personal quarters.

“I’m in a bit of a hurry, actually,” he attempted to object as Molly Weasley’s hand latched around his arm, pulling him back from the staircase.

“Nonsense, the meeting adjourned early, we still have twenty minutes until you expected it to be done. Just the perfect amount of time for a nice cup of tea.”

“I’m not thirsty—”

“So have a scone. Goodness, you look like you haven’t eaten in a week!”

Remus was tempted to retort with ‘ _You’re wrong, it’s only been a day and a half, actually,_ ’ but bit his tongue, knowing that that piece of information would hardly help him in worming out of the situation.

Tonks was, unsurprisingly, already seated in the kitchen, a mug of tea in her hand. Remus sensed an intervention.

It’s not that he didn’t like Tonks. He liked her quite a lot, actually. She was one of the people in the Order that he hit it off the best with. It just hurt a bit to look at her now, is all. Out of everyone (aside from Harry of course,) Tonks had been hit the hardest by Sirius’s death. Remus had watched her decline almost as rapidly as himself. Looking at her and her diminished persona felt a bit too much like looking in a mirror. Remus had never been very fond of mirrors.

“Wotcher, Remus?” She gave him a weak smile and listlessly stirred her tea.

“Hello, Tonks. Okay, fine. I’ll—I’ll just have a scone then. Just a small one. I must be going soon though.”

He reached for one only to have Molly snatch the plate out of his grasp.

“Here, allow me to get it for you,” she announced, grabbing one with currants in it (he’d been reaching for a plain one.) She then proceeded to slather it with a truly obscene amount of clotted cream. The plate she set in front of him ended up looking more like some kind of cream pie than a proper scone.

“Um, thanks,” he murmured, scrapping off about 80% of the topping.

An awkward silence settled across the table. It had been months, but it still felt weird to not have Tonks combating the quiet with a humorous transformation to make everyone laugh or loosen up.

“So,” said Tonks finally, looking up from making a miniature whirlpool in her mug, “how ’bout them Cannons?”

“Er…I dunno,” replied Remus. “I haven’t really been following quidditch lately.”

“Me neither,” admitted Tonks, and went back to staring at her tea.

“How’s…how’s it been in Hogsmeade?” he asked, feeling obligated to reciprocate her attempt at some sort of conversation.

“Dull,” said Tonks. “It’s turning into a ghost town, what with all the shops closing and people disappearing.”

“Ah,” said Remus, not really sure what to say to that. It was just an unsurprising truth.

“How’s it been with the werewolves?” asked Tonks back.

“Uncomfortable, mostly,” confessed Remus. “It’s not terrible. Well, the food’s pretty terrible.” He shrugged.

“I can tell,” interjected Molly, dropping a second uninvited scone onto Remus’s plate. “You look like you haven’t seen decent cooking in months. I have an idea! Why don’t the two of you go out and get a nice meal? You could bring Bill with you. He knows all the best places.”

Remus caught a faint glimpse of the old Tonks as she briefly rolled her eyes at Molly’s suggestion, but it didn’t last. Her face quickly faded back into a depressed blankness.

“I have plans already,” Remus said without even stopping to think about it. It was just a habit now to deflect social interaction whenever possible.

He watched, actually a little surprised as Tonks flinched, definitely looking _more_ depressed at his answer. Had she actually _wanted_ to go to dinner with him? Odd. Now he felt a bit guilty.

“Um, maybe tomorrow though?” he said compulsively, simply wanting to undo the miserable expression he’d put on her.

He immediately regretted opening his mouth but there was no taking it back. Not when she brightened at the offer, breaking into a smile that was a lot more genuine than the one she’d given him as he sat down at the table.

“I’d _love_ to, Remus.” She beamed.

* * *

“I think Hermione is up to something,” mused Harry as he lay on his bed, listlessly staring at the Marauder’s map.

“Yeah, I’m sure she is,” grumbled Ron. “Probably plotting how she can meet more famous quidditch players to snog.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” said Harry, seriously _not_ in the mood for getting in the middle of Ron and Hermione’s snit.

“Probably just busy writing buckets of love letters to Viktor Krum then,” Ron continued to gripe.

“She keeps borrowing my invisibility cloak,” said Harry. “And her reasons always seem a bit weak. Why would she need to steal ingredients from the potions supply room? Slughorn likes her so much I bet he’d just hand over whatever she wanted if she asked him.”

“I’ll bet she’s using it to sneak around and snog people,” said Ron.

“Oh, will you _lay off it_?” Harry snapped. “You _know_ she isn’t.”

“No,” retorted Ron glumly. “I don’t.”

“Well whose fault is that then,” muttered Harry, dropping the subject.

* * *

It was taking Hermione a lot longer than she’d planned to gather all of the instruments she needed to enact the spell she’d found in the book. Some of the supplies were rare, and others expensive. She’d had to brew a potion that had taken an entire month to set. The greatest impediment though, and the thing that was truly the key to pulling her entire plan off was her need for a time-turner.

Time-turners had never been an easy thing to acquire due to them being very strictly regulated by the Ministry of Magic. However, their elusiveness had recently become significantly worse, considering that the Ministry’s entire supply of them had been destroyed during the battle. Now the only way to procure one was through strictly illegal means.

Luckily, it wasn’t hard to guess where you should look if you needed to find something illegal. Hermione had yet again borrowed Harry’s cloak, invented an excuse about needing to visit a sick relative, and taken the Knight Bus back to Knockturn Alley.

It had been laughably easy to find a time-turner at Borgin and Burkes. As she took it she promised herself that she would be returning it promptly. She was definitely _not_ stealing—just borrowing—and for a very good cause. If she pulled everything off right, no one would ever even know.

It took an extremely long time to turn the time-turner enough to go back to where she wanted. She counted meticulously, tense with anxiety that she’d lose track and end up in the wrong point in time. She was glad for all the arithmancy classes she’d had, which had trained her to be exact with numbers.

The next difficult hurdle was getting back into the Department of Mysteries, but with the invisibility cloak she managed to sneak in.

Like before, Hermione carefully tested the doors, marking the correct ones with a flaming ‘X’ (although this time she modified the spell to last longer.) For the first time she questioned her decision to come alone. It was significantly creepier searching these corridors without Harry and Ron. (Or maybe it was just the fact that the last time she’d been here she had been blissfully ignorant to the horrors that were about to happen.) The air felt thick and heavy, the lingering sense of dread almost tangible.

The debris from the battle had been removed but the Death Chamber still bore marks from what had happened. The stone steps had chips and scorch marks that had not been there the first time. They blended in with the already decaying state of the arch, but Hermione could remember the contrast.

She knelt down in front of the veil and uncorked the protective potion she’d brewed, swallowing it in a single swig. With a determined look at the arch, Hermione began to recite the spell.

* * *

The first thought to float through Sirius’s thoroughly muddled mind was ‘ _I must have had too much to drink last night_.’

He frowned at the thought as soon as it appeared. He was pretty sure he wasn’t in the habit anymore of drinking to the point of obliterating his memory. It had been a pretty long time since he’d been carefree enough for that—years, for sure. For one, there had been a very long stretch of time where he obviously hadn’t had access to alcohol. And after he got out of Azkaban, he’d needed to be too careful to take stupid risks like getting drunk. Even when he’d been holed up in Grimmauld Place, and going so out of his mind with boredom that drinking sounded extremely appealing, he’d been careful to stay alert. He never knew when he’d be needed, if Death Eaters might attack or Harry might get in trouble….

Was Harry in trouble now? He was missing more of his memory than just the previous night. There was a huge yawning gap there that he couldn’t account for. He couldn’t even lock down on what his most recent memories were…. Had he been captured? Had his mind been altered?

He sat up abruptly and nearly fell over again from the wave of dizziness that swept over him.

“Sirius.”

There were hands on him now, scalding hot points of contact. How could anyone have skin that hot? Had he just been grabbed by a dragon?

No…no, wait. It wasn’t that the person’s hands were hot.

It was him. He was cold.

Oh, Merlin, was he _cold_.

“Sirius!”

The voice was getting more urgent. He tried to focus on it but his teeth were chattering in a distractingly violent manner and his mind was running in panicked loops. He might not be able to remember anything specific, but a clinging sense of _wrongness_ sat low in his gut.

“Sirius, we have to get out of here!”

The voice was familiar…not a Death Eater then. But maybe Death Eaters were closing in, going by the urgent pleas to escape.

“Where’s—where’s Harry?” he hoarsely stuttered out.

“Not here! He’s fine though!” The answer was accompanied by a tug on his arm.

“What’s going on?” he asked next.

“I’ll explain after we get somewhere safe.”

He glanced around. He was on a slate floor in what looked like a shadowy amphitheater. The rows of elevated stone benches looked familiar, although the nagging bad feeling in his stomach worsened as he took it in.

 _The Department of Mysteries_ , his brain sluggishly supplied.

“Can you transform into Padfoot?” asked the voice.

That question startled him out of his mental haze. Not very many people knew about Padfoot. Whoever was talking to him was part of his inner circle.

“Hermione?” he asked tentatively, the familiarity of the voice finally clicking into place.

“Yes,” confirmed Hermione. “We need to sneak out of here. It’ll be easier for you to fit under the invisibility cloak with me if you turn into Padfoot.”

Sirius nodded and melted into his dog form.

He very nearly immediately changed back. The room had an overpowering smell of death that had been undetectable as a human. It was almost unbearable to his newly sensitive nose, and triggered his heightened flight or fight instincts. He had to suppress the urge to growl.

Hermione disappeared under a swirl of shimmering fabric, and then an arm appeared from the nothingness and pulled him under.

Being under the cloak sent a pang of nostalgia through Sirius. It was a painfully familiar situation. He’d spent more hours than he could ever possibly count using it to sneak around Hogwarts. But every other time he’d been under it James had been the one sharing it with him. Being under the cloak without James only amplified how off-kilter everything felt.

“We’re in the Department of Mysteries,” Hermione whispered. “We need to get out and we _absolutely cannot be seen_. We cannot be seen by _anyone_. Not even after we get out of the Ministry. Do you understand?”

Sirius wanted to ask questions but his canine vocal cords prevented him. He let out a faint woof in affirmation. He could always ask questions later, he supposed.

He took a tentative step forward, following Hermione’s lead. An almost magnetic pull seemed to slow his progress though. He felt like he was fighting gravity, or wading through molasses.

 _Sirius_.

His head whipped around, he was certain that he’d just heard someone call his name. The room had been empty aside from him and Hermione though, hadn’t it?

_Sirius, Sirius, Sirius Black…._

It wasn’t just one voice, it was several. People were whispering all around him, calling him back to the center of the room. The voices were coming from an arch on a dais.

 _That’s something important!_ Screamed his brain. But he wasn’t sure _why_.

“Sirius!” A louder voice, a closer voice, _Hermione’s_ voice, hissed directly overhead. “Sirius, c’mon, we have to go _right now_.”

Right. Follow Hermione. That’s what he was supposed to do. He lifted a reluctant paw.

_Siiiirius…._

The whispers were like an itch in his brain, a niggling irritation of a memory just out of reach. Maybe that was why they were calling to him. Maybe if he just got a little closer to the arch they could tell him what it was he was forgetting…. 

A hand closed around the scruff of his neck and gave a forceful tug. He whined in protest, but the sensation jolted him out of his trance. _The arch was bad_. It was where the death smell was coming from. Why had he wanted to get closer to it? They needed to get _away_.

Without any consideration for the invisibility cloak, Sirius bolted up the rows of benches, forcing Hermione to scramble to keep up. The moment they were through the heavy door the viscous pull lessened and Sirius found himself able to move more freely.

He slowed and allowed Hermione to set the pace again. They were now creeping down a long hallway lit with flickering torches. The blue light undulated across the floor like rippling water. He kept waiting for someone to appear and stop them but the hallway remained deserted. They in fact made it through two more doors before the need to freeze and edge out of the way of a ministry employee occurred.

The farther they got from the stone amphitheater room, the less deserted the halls became. Their progress slowed to an agonizing crawl. No less than three times Sirius was nearly kicked by a scurrying passerby. At one point Hermione had to physically restrain him before he accidentally ran headfirst into a clerk.

He let out a held breath as they finally squeezed out of the building but his relief did not seem to reach Hermione. She continued to stiffly escort them away from anything that Sirius found familiar, carefully wending them around pedestrians and steering them away from crowds. They did not stop until arriving at a decrepit tenement building with boarded up windows. “ _Alohomora,_ ” whispered Hermione, allowing them to slip in through the door.

Sirius had been rather expecting the run-down appearance of the outside of the building to simply be a clever disguise, and that they would find a cozy and comfortable abode once they entered. Alas, this building had not been magically amended. The inside was just as condemned in appearance as the outside, and had the additional drawback of being extremely dark due to the plywood covering all the windows.

Hermione dropped the invisibility cloak and nodded in silent permission for Sirius to reveal himself.

He collapsed in a shivering heap as he transformed back. In his anxiety to escape unseen he’d somehow managed to forget the bone-cutting cold that felt like it had seeped into his very blood and marrow. But now that he could relax all of his physical discomfort came rushing back and was fighting to gain his attention.

“Sirius?” The urgency that had laced Hermione’s voice for the last hour or so was ebbing into softer concern. “Are you alright?”

“C-cold,” he mumbled. “Why am I so _cold_?” he noticed that Hermione didn’t seem to be shivering.

She immediately cast a warming charm and the stinging bite embedded in Sirius’s skin began to fade.

“What’s going on?” he asked again, as soon as his racking shivers quelled enough for him to think straight. “Why are you here but not Harry?”

“Well…” guilt flashed across her features. “That’s a bit complicated, actually. How much do you remember?”

“Everything’s a complete jumble,” Sirius admitted, frustratingly running his fingers through his hair. “There was something going on for the Order, wasn’t there? I can’t really remember anything. Just…a lot of people. And some sort of conflict. Where did everyone else go? They didn’t….” a lump like liquid lead began to slide down his throat. “The others didn’t...they didn’t _die_ , did…they?”

Hermione’s expression became guarded and calculating. “No…” she said carefully. “The others didn’t.”

The silent ‘ _but’_ hung heavy and unmistakable in the air, answering a question Sirius hadn’t even thought to ask.

“Just…me, then, was it?” Sirius stated. The horrible sick feeling spreading through his veins told him the answer before Hermione needed to. He somehow intrinsically _knew_. He suspected he’d known since the moment he’d regained consciousness, but his mind had been fighting to reject it.

“Just you.”

“Merlin’s beard.” Sirius looked down at his hands as if he expected them to turn transparent before his very eyes. “ _I died_.”

“Well…sort of,” Hermione corrected.

“How does someone ‘sort of’ die?”

“I went back in time,” Hermione admitted. “You did die. But I’ve come back. And I pulled you out before it could happen this time. So you _didn’t_ actually die. Not in the here and now. You were just sort of… _supposed_ to.”

“I died,” he just numbly repeated, running his hand through his hair again in bewilderment.

“Not this time,” Hermione said forcefully. “I figured out how to fix it.”

He finally looked up, gratitude spreading through his gaunt features. “ _Thank you_ ,” he said breathlessly.

“Well, I had to try,” said Hermione, a bit embarrassed. “I couldn’t stand seeing Harry being so torn up all the time. He’s just been a shell of himself since it happened—and Lupin too. They’re painful to look at and nothing you do to cheer them up reaches them.”

“Lupin?” asked Sirius, confused. He was not surprised to hear that Harry would take his death badly, but he hadn’t expected anyone else to be especially fussed about it. Remus was the most stoic person he knew, and had already written him off as lost when he’d been sent to Azkaban. It was true that their friendship had been reconnecting a bit during the few months they’d lived together at 12 Grimmauld Place, but Remus had still been more closed off than he had been…before. Not that Sirius blamed him. He would be the first to admit that he’d been a moody git all those months, he would have self depreciatingly joked that Remus might have been glad to be rid of him even.

“Yes,” said Hermione with a nod. “He seemed okay at first, honestly. Upset, of course, but in the normal way that everyone else was. But while Harry’s actually been doing a bit better with time, Lupin has been going downhill. It’s gotten a bit alarming, really.”

“Huh,” said Sirius, completely at a loss for what to make of that surprising news. “Well, what are we doing wasting time here then? Let’s go let them know I’m alright.”

“We can’t,” said Hermione simply.

“What?”

“We can’t let them see us,” said Hermione with a grim set to her jaw.

“What do you mean we can’t let them see us? I _have_ to see Harry. I can’t let him think that I’m dead when I’m not!”

“Sirius, I just told you that I had to go back in time. You know how that works! We cannot be seen. By _anyone_. We have to wait for the timeline to join up again! If anyone sees us it could have catastrophic ramifications.”

“Yeah, but…but surely it couldn’t change all that much if we just…gave Harry a message or something.”

“It could change _everything_ ,” Hermione insisted sternly. “The whole reason I went searching for a way to bring you back was because Harry was so gutted. If you send him a message that you’re all right he’ll cheer up, won’t he? And I might never find the book that had the answer to bring you back through the veil. So this will never of happened and you’ll go back to being dead.”

“But—”

“No buts! If they find out what is happening before the point where I left it could ruin everything! It’s too dangerous to interfere! I’m sorry Sirius, but it’s crucial that we wait. Time travel is one of the most dangerous things that you can do. And I’ve already pushed my luck enough by breaking into the Ministry and pulling you out of the void. Not to mention the book I illegally copied and the time-turner I stole. We _have_ to wait.”

Sirius was frowning heavily but he didn’t object further. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Alright, then. We’ll wait. How long are we looking at? I didn’t think that time-turners were good for going back more than a couple of hours. You make it sound like some time went by though. Was it a few days then? A week maybe?”

“Eight and a half months,” said Hermione, sounding apologetic.

Sirius broke into a harsh coughing fit. “ _What_?”

“I’m sorry, but you were gone for a while. Everyone assumed you were dead. And it took me a while to come up with the idea for saving you. And then it took me even longer to implement the parts of my plan.”

“You must be joking. How—it’s not even possible to go back that far—is it?”

“Well—the limit for going back is more of a safety regulation than a physical impossibility,” Hermione explained. “The Ministry doesn’t want people to know that they can go back farther than a few hours because the danger that you’ll mess things up goes up exponentially the farther back you go. I think the Ministry regulation ones had safety charms on them to stop them being used like that. I read about it in _A History of Magical Law Enforcement_. But those are all gone now, anyway. I nicked the one I used from Borgin and Burkes. It not too surprisingly didn’t have any impediments on it.”

“Blimey,” said Sirius in awe. “I ought to make you an honorary Marauder.”

“Well I don’t plan on making a habit of doing those sorts of things,” Hermione confessed. “These were extenuating circumstances.”

“Eight and a half months,” Sirius repeated, beginning to pace around the room. “We have to stay out of everyone’s sight for _eight and a half months_?”

“It can’t be that bad,” offered Hermione. “You were in hiding a lot longer than that after escaping from Azkaban.”

“But Harry knew I was _alive_ then. I could send him letters!”

“Look, Sirius. Harry is going to be okay. Where I came from he’s already gotten through those eight and a half months. He’s fine.”

“You just said that he was _gutted_.”

“Well…yes,” Hermione conceded. “But he got through it. And he _will_ be more than fine as soon as we catch up with the proper time.”

“Why didn’t you bring him back with you?” Sirius asked unhappily.

“I didn’t want to get his hopes up in case my plan didn’t work.”

“I need to see him.”

“That’s really not a good idea. I think we should stay here and leave the building as little as possible.”

“I won’t let him see me!” Sirius insisted. “I’ll keep my distance. We can use the invisibility cloak. I just want to _see_ him. I watched him all the time without him noticing when I first escaped from Azkaban and he didn’t know who I was! I’m excellent at stealth!”

“Yeah, well,” said Hermione. “The emotional stakes were different before he knew who you were, weren’t they? I imagine it would have been easier to not interact.”

“I won’t let him see me,” Sirius stubbornly insisted.

“You’d better not. You do realize that if you change anything it could have unimaginable consequences? Right now, in the future Harry is fine. But if you interfere with the wrong thing, he could end up _dead._ ”

Sirius’s pallid complexion turned even ashier than normal. “I won’t let him see me,” he just solemnly repeated.

“You’d better not.”

* * *

Sirius and Hermione spent the next several days enchanting the inside of the abandoned building into more suitable living quarters. Sirius took on the endeavor rather enthusiastically. In fact, he was a little too enthusiastic as far as Hermione was concerned. The way his attention had completely dropped the topic of needing to observe Harry in favor of interior decorating struck her as suspect. After the third day of watching him put up only to take down and then put up again a succession of different colored damask wallpapers, she was fairly convinced it was all a front to lull her into dropping her guard.

That night she placed a charm on the invisibility cloak to sound an alarm if it was touched. She only managed about thirty minutes of sleep before a loud ringing startled her awake.

“Sirius!” she shrieked indignantly.

He stood, a guilty expression frozen on his face, in the middle of the room with the cloak clutched in his fingers.

“No!” She insisted. “Sirius, you _can’t_!”

Instead of answering her though, Sirius shrank into Padfoot, grabbed the cloak in his mouth and bounded out of the room. She tried to stupefy him, but his dog reflexes were much more agile than a human’s and he easily bounced out of the way from her wand blast.

Hermione took off after him, but wasn’t nearly as fast. She didn’t dare keep chasing him for long. Without the invisibility cloak it would be impossible to be sure no one saw her as she ran.

She resigned herself to having to wait for him to come back. Instead of going back to sleep, she settled down with a book to wait. Sirius might have escaped her apprehension, but he was not going to escape getting chewed out for it.

* * *

It wasn’t the first time Sirius had snuck out. He’d stolen the invisibility cloak every night since his first day back. He was surprised it had taken Hermione a few days to catch on. How could she expect him to not check on Harry? It would have been easier to ask him to stop breathing.

Especially considering the disturbing sight he found when he _did_ make it to Privet Drive. Did Hermione know just how bad it was? Had she seen Harry in the aftermath while he was still staying with the Dursleys?

It didn’t matter what time Sirius showed up. The light in Harry’s window was always on, and Harry was almost never asleep. Sirius climbed up the tree in the yard to survey the window, and every time without fail found Harry lying on his bed, eyes blank and staring at the ceiling. He could see untouched plates of food cluttering the floor. He’d watch for hours and Harry barely moved. He was more devoid of vitality than the average Azkaban detainee.

How the hell was he supposed to carry on without interfering? How could he turn a blind eye to his godson suffering so much?

The only thing that had stopped him from immediately intervening was the echo of Hermione’s words in his head: _if you interfere with the wrong thing, he could end up dead._

No matter what, Sirius would not risk letting anything bad happen to Harry. And so, even though it repeatedly shattered his heart to do nothing and every fiber of this being screamed out against inactivity, he stood guard without letting Harry see him. Although he had sworn to Hermione that he wouldn’t let Harry know, he couldn’t swear that he could keep that up indefinitely. He wouldn’t however, do so impulsively. If he revealed himself, it would only be the result of careful planning and consideration. He would not gamble with his godson’s future recklessly.

Which meant that tonight, like the ones before it, Sirius spent hours unmoving in the tree and resisted all temptation to lean forward and knock on the glass, or send a friendly patronus inside to comfort Harry. As he sat sentinel his extremities went sore and then numb but it was nothing compared to the numbness spreading through his insides at the sight of Harry’s misery and the fact that his legal guardians did not care and were not offering him an ounce of comfort.

* * *

“ _Sirius_.”

Sirius put his hands up as he slipped back into their hideout. He probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find Hermione waiting to ambush him.

“No one saw me,” he immediately assured.

“Someone could have!”

“I was careful.” He dropped the cloak onto a table and flopped down on the bed he had conjured for himself. (It was twice as big as necessary and barely visible under the massive mountain of duvets and pillows piled upon it. After years in prison followed by months spent sleeping on the stony floor of a cave, Sirius could never get enough blankets or pillows.)

“It doesn’t matter how careful you are!” Hermione sprung up so that she could loom disapprovingly over him. “Accidents can happen! A wind could come along and blow the cloak off! You could trip and reveal yourself!”

“You worry too much,” said Sirius flippantly. “I’m not going to let anything like that happen.”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed. “If you actually had as much control over unforeseen complications as you seem to think you do, you wouldn’t have died and we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Sirius winced. He still couldn’t remember the actual battle, let alone ‘dying,’ but Hermione had filled him in on what had happened. “That was different,” he argued. “I was being forcefully _attacked_. That’s a completely different circumstance than me being an undetected observer. I was on the run for ages, and never got caught, wasn’t I? I’m more experienced at sneaking around unseen than pretty much anyone. I was watching Harry for months after I broke out of Azkaban. He didn’t see me then.”

“He did, actually,” said Hermione. “He told me that he saw you a couple of times. He thought that Padfoot was the Grim.”

“Well I didn’t have an invisibility cloak back then, did I? Still not the same. He’s not going to see me this time.”

Hermione slapped her hands over her eyes and dragged them down her face in frustration.

“You’re going to ruin everything,” she despaired.

“You’re going to make me go insane,” Sirius predicted.

* * *

Hermione continued to try to foil Sirius’s escapes, but he was older and had had more years of schooling under his belt. Not to mention all the elite training his parents had instilled in him as a child. Hermione might be a brilliant witch, but natural talent could only take you so far, and sometimes quantity of experience won out. Sirius repeatedly managed to slip by her or overpower her interventions.

The first two weeks Sirius doggedly shadowed Harry, hoping deep down that although undetected, his mere presence might somehow subconsciously offer comfort.

Unfortunately, Harry’s status never seemed to waver or improve. In the middle of the third week Sirius decided that it might be time to spread out and spy on people other than Harry—other people mainly consisting of Remus, of course. Because Sirius was still having trouble wrapping his mind around the idea that Remus was stewing over his death as badly as Harry was.

He wasn’t certain that Remus would have stayed at 12 Grimmauld Place without him there, but as it was the last place he knew Remus was living, it was the obvious first place to check. As he had hoped, Remus hadn’t yet moved out.

Observing Remus was significantly more difficult than dropping in on Harry. His family had been far too paranoid about security to allow a tree to grow near enough to any windows for eavesdropping. Even if they had though, the house was too large for that to be an effective means to gather much information. There were internal rooms and corridors without windows, making it easy for an occupant to move about unseen for hours.

Knowing that he was being stupidly risky, Sirius climbed up to the roof and let himself in through an attic window. The house was still coded to allow entrance to anyone in the Black family, so it did not set off any alarms. The only danger was making sure that Kreacher did not see the window open.

Kreacher was apparently nowhere to be found, however, and sneaking inside was easier than Sirius had expected.

He found himself further in luck that apparently none of the doors to any of the rooms were shut. He imagined that there was no need for privacy when you were the house’s only occupant.

As he cautiously made his way through the hallways, he couldn’t help lingering outside the empty master bedroom in quiet disappointment. He knew that it was unrealistic to expect Buckbeak to still be there without him, but he missed the hippogriff almost as much as Harry, and had secretly hoped to see him again as well. He made a mental note to interrogate Hermione about where he had been taken.

An eerie glow was emanating from the door of the bedroom Remus had occupied when they’d lived there together. Sirius frowned, raised his wand under the cloak, and sped up his pace as he approached. The cool silvery light was not consistent with the warm hues of the gas lamps present in the house. Nothing he was familiar with in 12 Grimmauld Place glowed like that. Had something bad happened? Was he going to look in and find the aftermath of a terrible hex or jinx?

Remus sat at an old ornately carved desk, an empty crystal tumbler in his hand. He had it tipped on its bottom edge and was rocking it around in circles while sightlessly staring at the age worn wooden desktop. Suspended above him were six silver orbs, throbbing with ethereal platinum light.

The scene was so unexpected that Sirius wasn’t able to stop himself from audibly gasping. The rhythmic rolling of the tumbler abruptly halted and Remus’s head snapped up to peer at the seemingly empty doorframe. Sirius held his breath for what felt like centuries as Remus’s hollow eyes bored straight through him.

Finally Remus seemed to give up on determining where the noise had come from and let his gaze fall back to the desktop. As if he’d never been interrupted he returned to mindlessly rocking his empty glass, not a shred of acknowledgement going to the unearthly light sources bobbing above his head.

For a second Sirius had thought that the room was filled with ghosts, or that a spell had been cast on Remus. He’d never seen six full moons at once and the unprecedented quantity of them had been disconcerting. It took a moment for him to remember that the house had been infested with boggarts.

_Six was a lot of boggarts in one place. Why wasn’t Remus bothering to banish them?_

It was extremely alarming to watch his very dear friend, someone who had once been able to masterfully evaporate a boggart without even blinking, someone who would go to any length to avoid reminders of the full moon no less, simply sitting there and allowing his worst fear to dominate his living space.

He didn’t even seem to be noticing them. Was he actually oblivious? Or had they been hounding him so long he’d grown numb to their presence?

_Why wasn’t Remus banishing them?!_

Sirius lost track of how long he hovered there staring at Remus’s sunken features and mechanical hand movements. He was pale and unshaven; his hair laced with noticeably more grey than the last time Sirius had seen him. Eventually Remus released his grip on the tumbler, and it spun precariously before wobbling to a stop.

 _That’s from my mum’s favorite crystal set. Pity it didn’t break._ The thought came unbidden to Sirius’s mind as he watched.

Remus stood up, stretched, and then paused, looking as if he’d lost his train of thought. He remained frozen in the middle of the room for several minutes. For a moment Sirius was afraid he’d accidentally made another sound that Remus had detected. But Remus didn’t turn towards the doorway again. Instead he began to pace. The boggarts trailed behind him as he circled, sometimes bumping into each other when Remus haphazardly changed direction. The sight would have been comical if it wasn’t so disturbing.

The sky was already fading into a rose tinged charcoal when Remus finally collapsed onto his bed. He fell asleep on top of the blankets, without bothering to change his clothes.

Sirius lingered much longer than he knew was a good idea, fighting the temptation to eliminate the boggarts before he left.

_Hermione had said that Harry had gotten better…but Remus had gotten worse. If he was like this now…how bad was ‘worse’? What was he like after eight months of this?_

It was with a very uneasy heart that Sirius finally slunk home in the early dawning light.

Hermione was waiting, as always, to reprimand him, but he barely even heard her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My interpretation of what lies beyond the Veil was loosely based on the Ginnungagap of Norse Mythology.


	2. Waiting and Planning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius starts driving Hermione crazy and tries to convince himself he's not a stalker.

Hermione was yet again lamenting her decision to leave Harry and Ron out of her plan. This time it wasn’t because things were creepy or because there was a risk that she couldn’t accomplish a dangerous task without assistance. No, right now she desperately wanted a companion who could intervene before she resorted to killing Sirius with her own bare hands. Because it would be terribly unfortunate for her to have gone through all this trouble just to have him still wind up dead.

_Boing_.

“Sirius.”

_Boing_.

“Sirius, _please_ stop.”

_Boing_.

“Sirius, I’m trying to study.”

_Boing_.

“Evanesco!”

There was a _thud_ , which Hermione assumed was probably the sound of a dog hitting a wall as the ball it was chasing disappeared. She couldn’t be bothered to look though.

“That was dirty,” groused Sirius.

“I’m trying to study,” retorted Hermione, sans remorse.

“If you just let me get out of here more I wouldn’t be bothering you,” he said predictably.

“No. You know why not.”

“I’ve spent almost half of my entire life in various prisons. It’s inhuman.”

Hermione resisted the temptation to point out that Sirius only bothered to be human part of the time, anyway. “It’s only for a few more months. Your name was cleared after you died. You’ll be able to do whatever you want once we can go out of hiding. I’m not being unreasonable.”

“Really?” Sirius’s voice perked up considerably at that revelation.

“Yes, really,” confirmed Hermione. “Now _please_ be quiet for a bit so that I can study.”

“Where’d you even get this many books from, anyway?” asked Sirius, apparently incapable of understanding what ‘please be quiet’ meant.

“I brought them with me,” said Hermione. “My bag has an undetectable extension charm on it. I can fit my entire library inside.”

“You can fit anything you want into your bag and you wasted that potential with homework?” asked Sirius in dismay.

“I filled it with food and supplies too,” said Hermione grumpily. “I can’t go for eight months without studying! I’ll forget everything I learned and fail all my classes when I get back to school!”

“No you won’t,” argued Sirius. “I’ve seen how smart you are. You’re a natural at most stuff. I’d bet you’d be fine with a few hours of brushing up right at the end of things. You’re wasting several months worth of holiday where you could be doing much more worthwhile things.”

“Like what exactly?”

“Like entertaining me. Do you have an exploding snap deck in there?”

Hermione turned around to find Sirius poking around in her purse.

“Stop that!” She hurled a wadded up piece of parchment at him.

Sirius dropped her bag but gave her a reproachful glower. “Eight months of self-imposed studying. Egad, you’re worse than Moony.”

His face fell though as he realized what he’d just carelessly said: _Worse than Moony_. That phrase held an entirely different meaning than what he’d intended. Was it even possible to be _worse than Moony_ right now? Even Harry wasn’t doing worse. Moony was in a terrible state.

“Look, it’s just making me crazy that I can’t help them,” he finally admitted. “I need distractions or I’ll tear my hair out with guilt and worrying.”

Hermione looked up from her book in surprise, caught off-guard by Sirius’s unexpected candidness.

“You could read some of my books,” she offered.

Sirius picked up the nearest book and raised a skeptical eyebrow at its title: _Druidic Plants and their Magical Uses – A guide in the original Ogham, with annotations in Elder Futhark._

“No thanks,” he said, dropping the volume with distaste.

“Not all of the books are academic,” she replied. “If you look through them more thoroughly you can find something more entertaining.”

“I already tried,” admitted Sirius. “I—er, well. I’ve been finding it harder to focus on printed text since you brought me back. The words go a bit swimmy when I stare at them.”

Abject horror splashed across Hermione’s face. “You can’t read anymore?” she gasped.

“I _can_ ,” Sirius corrected. “But it’s a lot more effort than it used to be. And comes with a lot more headaches.”

“Oh. Oh, _Sirius_. That’s awful.”

“It’s fine.” He tried to shrug it off like it didn’t matter to him. He felt like it _shouldn’t_ matter to him—a focusing problem seemed like a small price to pay in exchange for _breathing_. But he was disturbed by it. It was only one of many small details that didn’t quite seem to be working exactly as they had before he’d fallen through the veil. He was still uncertain whether or not they would sort themselves out in time or turn into permanent disabilities.

“That’s not fine!” Hermione fretted. “That’s terrible! Oh dear, I wonder if it’s because I did something wrong when I pulled you out? Maybe I should have used a pinch more vervain in the potion! The recipe wasn’t very exact in its measurements. I should have thought of that!”

“I’m sure it had nothing to do with anything you did, and everything to do with death being inescapable without side effects.” Sirius shrugged.

“I’ll help you get better at reading again,” Hermione promised. “We can do practice exercises together.”

“That sounds like even more torture than just watching you study.”

“No, really. It won’t be that bad!” she reassured. “I’m a pretty good tutor.”

“I don’t doubt that, but it still sounds like about as much fun as doing a troll’s laundry without magic. I’m 36, Hermione. I barely had the attention span to study when I was your age.”

“Would it be better if you were the one doing the tutoring?” asked Hermione.

“Say what?”

A slightly manic gleam shone in Hermione’s eye. “Well,” she said, in a cautiously calculating tone. “You’ve just pointed out how much older you are than me. I bet you know _loads_ of spells I don’t. If you’re bored and need distractions, you could spend some time teaching _me_.”

“Me?” he asked. “A teacher? That seems—wrong.”

“Well, if you don’t think you actually know more than a sixth year, half your age….” Hermione trailed off and picked up her book, trying to look nonchalant as she pretended to go back to reading.

“Now hang on,” Sirius objected. “I know spells that no one outside of the Black family have ever learned. Not to mention all the stuff that the Marauders and I outright invented. I’m _loaded_ with elite skills.”

“So prove it,” challenged Hermione. “Teach me things that I could never learn at Hogwarts.”

“Alright,” said Sirius, crossing his arms defiantly. “Alright, I _will_. Try and keep up.”

* * *

Time passed much more quickly after Sirius began giving Hermione lessons. He hadn’t thought he’d particularly enjoy such a conventional-member-of-the-establishment type of role before (it was definitely much more of Moony’s realm, he thought with a pang,) but there was something surprisingly satisfying in having someone raptly hanging off his every word. It might have been a trying job with anyone else as his student, but Hermione was sharp and attentive, and he rarely had to explain himself more than once. He felt genuinely useful for the first time since he’d been arrested. Reclaiming a sense of purpose did a lot to improve his mental health.

This would have put him in a substantially better mood if he weren’t also being weighed down by his regular observations of Harry and Remus.

Harry eventually left the Dursleys, and went to stay at the Burrow before returning to Hogwarts. True to Hermione’s word, he became a bit less despondent with the regular interaction of his friends and the Weasleys acting as a surrogate family. It was a slight relief to see Harry improve, although bittersweet.

_I always imagined Harry being the one I might teach magic to someday_ , he thought sorrowfully during most of his lessons with Hermione. _It should be him I’m training now. It should be me he’s escaping the Dursleys with._

Regretful as he was to see Harry improving in spite of him, rather than because of him, Sirius was grateful to see his godson recovering functionality.

The same could not be said for Remus.

As Harry got better and Remus got worse, Sirius found himself allocating more of his spying expeditions to the latter instead of the former. He couldn’t help it; it was like watching a broom collision in slow motion. He just couldn’t turn away.

Remus continued to stay shut in at 12 Grimmauld Place for long swaths of time, staggering around in a listless daze. The boggart and doxy infestations continued to multiply unchecked around him. Sirius watched disapprovingly as Remus ate less and less. He didn’t get the impression it was intentional at least, it seemed more like Remus simply _forgot_ , as if his mind was too far elsewhere to remember that he was hungry or needed sustenance. Several times he observed as Remus sat down a sandwich mid-bite and wandered off, never returning to so much as put away the uneaten leftovers.  

_Where was Kreacher_ , Sirius continued to wonder. _The little slimeball should be there to clean up and look after Remus. Why had he disappeared?_

And all the while Sirius obsessed over what could have caused the drastic decline in his friend. Hermione had blamed it on Sirius’s death, but surely that couldn’t be all? Such disconsolation seemed to go beyond what was warranted for even a very close friend’s loss. Especially in someone as tough and resilient as he’d thought Moony was.

There were signs though, that Hermione was right. Sometimes Remus would drift into Sirius’s old bedroom and run his fingers over the photograph of the Marauders on his wall. In fact, Sirius suspected that Remus might have taken it down and brought it into his own room if there hadn’t been a permanent sticking charm on it. The expression that would sometimes flit across his face as he did so—fond and melancholic and somehow a little bit _something else_ that Sirius couldn’t quite put his finger on—always sent sharp pains through his chest. He wanted nothing more than to fling off the invisibility cloak and proclaim ‘ _Stop looking like that, I’m right here, I’m fine, I’m not going anywhere_.’

The heavy weight of responsibility stopped him from doing so. He was stuck just helplessly watching. And the more he watched the more he thought about it. And the more he thought about it the more he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He was thinking about Remus pretty much all the time now. And that should probably seem weird, but Sirius wasn’t too worried about it. He was prone to obsessing over things—over the years that trait had been directed at a variety of different targets: motorbikes, quidditch, making the Marauder’s map, choreographing the perfect prank, provoking his mother, seeking revenge, the list went on—and what else did he have to occupy his attention in this current state of seclusion? Moony’s confusing grief spiral was certainly a conundrum worthy of his obsessive attention.

When Remus actually got around to sleeping, it was usually fitful: he often woke up several times throughout the night. Sometimes he’d jump awake and grab his wand, pointing it with wide eyes at empty shadows. Other times he wouldn’t wake up completely—just thrash around a bit and mutter incoherently in his semi-consciousness, mumbling about the moon or grindylows or Death Eater attacks. If it had been the old days, and he’d simply overheard such things while sharing a dorm, Sirius wouldn’t have hesitated to wake Remus up and shake him out of whatever troubling dreams were harassing him. It was beyond frustrating to have to remain a silent observer instead of rushing to his friend’s aide and offering him relief. Sirius hated himself a little each time he stood by and didn’t intervene.

It was about two and a half months into his vigil that _it_ happened.

Sirius just thought of the incident as _it_ because he didn’t know how to classify _it_ or what to make of _it_ , and trying to figure out how he felt about _it_ was definitely an impossible task.

But boy, did he ever spend a lot of time after _thinking_ about _it_.

It was a fairly typical night consisting of Remus staying up until the early morning hours, only to crash into an uneasy half-sleep. He muttered about Order missions a bit, only to trail off and go still for a while. When he finally talked in his sleep again, the word was spoken so softly that Sirius nearly missed it.

“…Padfoot….”

If Sirius had been in dog form at that moment, his ears would have perked up and swiveled towards the bed like furry satellite dishes. As it was, his inferior human senses all went on alert, tensely tuned in with heightened awareness.

He must have misheard. He must have imagined….

Remus murmured his name again, and this time it was unmistakable.

Sirius’s heart leapt up into his throat (which was admittedly weird, why did it do that?)

Against his better judgment he crept closer and leaned over the bed.

Remus’s face was taut with tension, his fingers threaded in the sheets. Was he having a nightmare?

Whatever type of dream it was, there was no mistaking that Sirius was featured prominently in it. And that was—unexpected. And—very interesting. And made Sirius feel kind of weird and giddy and uncomfortable all at once.

And for once he didn’t feel the compulsion to shake Remus awake. Quite the opposite, he wanted to keep raptly watching, waiting to see if the werewolf would let slip any other verbal clues to what exactly he was dreaming.

To his disappointment, Remus made no other determinable noises. Sirius watched him for several more hours, but whatever was transpiring within his friend’s subconscious remained a mystery.

* * *

A mere two weeks later, Remus disappeared. At first Sirius just assumed he must be visiting someone, another member of the Order perhaps, but when he failed to reappear after three days Sirius began to grow alarmed. He checked the cottage he knew Remus had lived in before moving to 12 Grimmauld Place, but that was vacant as well. He couldn’t think of anywhere else he would be, other than _in trouble_.

Fortunately, Hermione had an answer for him.

(Or unfortunately, perhaps, because Sirius _did not_ like her answer.)

“Oh,” she said, nodding when Sirius asked her if she knew where he’d gone (by this point she’d given up on scolding him for going out to check on Remus and Harry, it had clearly been a lost cause.) “Yes. He told Harry that Dumbledore sent him to infiltrate the werewolf community. He’s camped out somewhere with Fenrir Greyback’s gang.”

“ _What?!_ ” Sirius screeched.

“Don’t worry, he’s okay. Harry saw him at Christmas. Er, I mean, he’s _going_ to see him at Christmas. He was all right. He’ll come back.”

“That’s—that’s not okay!” Sirius shrieked hysterically.

“Sirius, don’t worry. He’s going to be fine.”

“But he’s not! You know he’s not! You saw how bad he was before you came to get me! He isn’t himself at all! He’s a mess!”

“That’s probably in his best interest for the mission, actually,” said Hermione calmly. “The werewolves are very untrusting of anyone who seems to function too well in wizard society. They’ll be more likely to accept him if he seems—well—messed up.”

“They’ll eat him alive!”

“Werewolves aren’t cannibals. They’d be more likely to eat _you_ alive,” Hermione said all-knowingly.

“I know that! I meant figuratively! It’s _Fenrir Greyback_ , Hermione! _Greyback_ , for Merlin’s sake! He’s the one who turned Remus! He’s a psychopath. How could Dumbledore ask that of him? It’s _cruel.”_

Sirius dropped into a chair, feeling too unsteady from rage to stand up.

“Dumbledore wouldn’t have asked him if he didn’t think Remus could handle it. You don’t have to panic so much, because we know he’ll be coming back. He didn’t have any major wounds afterwards or anything.”

“Physical wounds, you mean,” Sirius corrected bitterly. “You know he’d be the last person to advertise what it did to him psychologically.”

Hermione’s lips turned down in a subtle frown. She obviously agreed but didn’t want to encourage Sirius’s temper tantrum.

“He’ll be back. Try not to worry.”

“Impossible.”

“Well, we can’t do anything about it,” she said instead.

“I have to check on him,” Sirius muttered, as if he hadn’t even heard Hermione’s words. “Where would the werewolf camp be? Where should I start looking?”

“Sirius Black, don’t you dare!” Now it was Hermione’s turn to raise her voice.

“For the last time, I’ll be careful! No one will see me!”

“It doesn’t matter if they see you! They’ll _smell_ you! Werewolves have heightened senses! They notice things humans don’t!”

“Remus didn’t smell me,” Sirius argued petulantly.

“He was living in _your_ house,” Hermione retorted. “Everything around him probably still smelled like you.”

“I do not smell anything like that moldy old dust trap,” said Sirius indignantly.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Even if he wasn’t smelling you on the furniture and things, remember that he’s been _grieving_ about you. If he noticed your scent he probably just attributed it to wishful thinking.”

Something faintly warm spread through him at the idea of Remus being _wishful_ about anything to do with him. It was kind of an odd feeling, and something he ought to file away to ponder on later.

“But anyway,” Hermione continued, obviously noticing that she had failed to convince Sirius of the danger of his intentions. “12 Grimmauld Place is a safe house. Remus isn’t going to be as suspicious while he’s there as the other werewolves will be. You can’t risk it!”

“I can’t leave him alone to that!” Sirius shouted in exasperation.

“In that case I’m really sorry for doing this,” said Hermione, pulling out her wand. “ _Petrificus Totalus_!”

* * *

Hermione knew that she couldn’t keep Sirius in a full body-bind for the next two or three months straight, but she had to do _something._ Even if immobilizing Sirius wasn’t a permanent solution, it was somewhere to start. She took advantage of the time it bought her to hide the invisibility cloak, reasoning that although stubborn, he wasn’t actually stupid enough to risk going out without it.

And she was right about that at least.

Unfortunately the thing she forgot was that her very argument about werewolves being more sensitive to non-visual cues also applied to dogs. The cloak was quite thoroughly concealed, but all Sirius had to do was transform into Padfoot, and the scent trail to its hiding place became quite obvious to him.

He found it almost immediately.

Hermione took advantage of the new dueling skills he’d taught her to almost instantly stun him again. The second time she hid it she was much more careful to protect it with complex concealing charms that obscured it by more than sight alone.

It took nearly three days for Sirius to find it the second time.

And so it proceeded, with Hermione and Sirius locked in a heated back-and-forth tug-of-war over the invisibility cloak and access out of the building.

Hermione managed to stall Sirius for about a week and a half before he finally gave her the slip with the cloak in his grasp.

She punched the wall in frustration, wondering how long she was going to have to wait before everything began to fall apart.

* * *

Hermione needn’t have worried so much though, as try as he might, Sirius couldn’t find the werewolf camp. He spent most of his search as Padfoot, ever alert for the scent of Remus or other wolves. He explored all of the undeveloped areas around London, slowly spreading out farther and farther afield. He went north to Scotland, working his way up through the Highlands. He investigated dozens of the tiny islands scattered along the coast. He ran across moors, the scratchy low lying shrubs catching at his fur, and he ran up rocky formations where the jagged stones tore at his feet. He ran until his paws were bloody and he was out of ideas of where to look. He began to consider checking the mainland, but talked himself out of it. Was there even a point considering that aside from Remus, the other werewolves were unlikely to possess magic? With a group incapable of apparating, Lord Voldemort would want them close enough to mobilize, not scattered across the far reaches of Europe. He knew that trying to cover such a vast amount of ground would take him months, if not years, magical assistance or not. At the rate he was going, Remus would come back on his own long before Sirius managed to find his camp.

To try and distract himself from his failure, Sirius spent several days skulking around Hogwarts and keeping an eye on Harry, who to his relief was acting significantly more Harry-ish again. He would have stayed there indefinitely, but the desire to bite Dumbledore whenever he chanced to see him was becoming disturbingly strong. Sirius finally went back to London to remove the temptation.

In London he found one very pissed off Hermione Granger and one greyer, thinner, Remus Lupin.

* * *

Remus began to disappear more frequently, and during the interim times he was in 12 Grimmauld Place began to collect more visitors. Sirius knew he should be _glad_ that Remus was out actually doing things and that people were trying to coax social interaction out of him, but he found himself getting increasingly irritated with the barriers they were creating against his stalking.

_Not stalking_ , Sirius repeatedly tried to rationalize to himself. _Stalking is creepy. I’m not being creepy. I’m just worried about him. I’m being a concerned friend. I’m trying to help him, not stalk him._

Who was he trying to kid? He was totally stalking him.

He wasn’t sure how Remus was going to react when he finally found out. He wasn’t even sure that he was going to have the nerve to tell him.

He would have told the old Moony. The one he’d known back at school. The old Moony would have shared a laugh about the whole thing, amenably seeing the adventure in the situation, and the noble intentions behind Sirius’s motivations.

The old Moony didn’t really exist now though. Not any more than the old Padfoot did.

Their senses of humor had taken a pretty serious hit from the war and its consequences. Their perceptions got stretched in different directions, shaped by the different hardships they’d suffered through, leaving behind reflections of their old selves, but the reflections were warped and unpredictable. The friendship they had now was a new one, and the rules and boundaries were different somehow, and they hadn’t quite settled into it comfortably enough yet for Sirius to be sure about anything.

So he really had no way of knowing if Remus would see Sirius’s watchfulness as something comforting or violating.

What if he got really upset?

What if the revelation that Sirius had been lurking about for months would erase all of his grief, replacing it with revulsion? What if Remus decided that he wished Sirius had died after all? The thought of that even being a possibility made Sirius feel seriously ill.

He knew that the answer was that he should back off. If he thought there was even a single percentage of a chance that Remus would be bothered by what he was doing, he should do what Hermione had said all along and stay away.

He just…couldn’t though.

The image of Remus’s vacant eyes haunted him whenever he closed his own. His friend’s tormented face seemed to follow him, even when Sirius wasn’t present. Sirius was pretty sure he’d go mad, knowing that Remus was wallowing in such a state and being unable to see it. He might be resolved not to intervene, but when he was watching he could at least pretend it was an option. He could delude himself into thinking that if something got _really_ bad he could throw caution to the wind and reveal himself and solve the problem, screw the consequences.

The temptation to reveal himself became particularly compelling once Tonks began coming around.

Initially Sirius tried to be positive about the development. On the surface it seemed like a very good thing. Nymphadora Tonks was one of the most energetic and upbeat people he knew. She was full of life, and if there was one thing that Remus needed right now, it was to be reminded what being full of life was like.

The problem was, Tonks apparently _wasn’t_ full of life anymore. She looked nearly as devastated as Remus did. Sirius disapproved. What business did someone who was being such a downer have, adding to Remus’s burden of negativity? What business did Remus have letting her? Why weren’t they simply driving each other crazy?

And yet they weren’t. Remus had seemed reluctant at first about spending time with her, but he wasn’t pushing her away. And now they seemed to be _bonding_.

What was up with that?

And what was up with it bothering him? Shouldn’t he be glad that Remus was finally reaching out and being with friends (or were they more than friends?) Shouldn’t he be rejoicing at anything that held the potential to cheer Remus up? Shouldn’t he be pleased that the daughter of his favorite cousin, someone that he generally got along with and thought well of, was hitting it off so well with his closest living friend?

A good friend would be glad about all these things.

A good friend would encourage them.

A good friend would definitely not be fantasizing about punching Nymphadora Tonks in the face.

When Hermione had pulled him back out of the veil had she accidently left his sanity behind in the void?

What was wrong with him?

_Something_ was wrong with him. Tonks wasn’t from the right branch of his family tree to inspire violent urges. She used to be one of the only relatives that he _didn’t_ want to punch the lights out of. Tonks was cool.

(Not quite as cool as himself though, don’t get him wrong.)

(She definitely wasn’t cool enough to warrant usurping Sirius’s place in Remus’s life.)

(Nobody was.)

Although why he was suddenly dwelling on words like _usurp_ just because Remus was becoming moderately social, he wasn’t sure. He might have been part of a very tight-knit group of friends but he didn’t used to feel so _possessive_ of them.

This ongoing limbo of isolation was messing with his head.

* * *

“How much longer?” Sirius asked for the fifteenth time that afternoon. “How much longer before we can go back to normal and talk to people for real?

Hermione made a show out of opening up her homework calendar and inspecting the dates, despite the fact that she’d already checked it for him some fourteen and a half times that day.

“Approximately two months,” she explained with an exasperated sigh.

“That’s too long,” Sirius objected. “It must be wrong. I definitely think it’s been eight months already.”

“It’s been six and a half months,” countered Hermione. “It’s not wrong. Trust me. I have been _excruciatingly_ aware of every single second of them.”

“Two months is too long,” Sirius whined. “I can’t do it. It’s impossible.”

“You’ll survive.”

“Doubtful. I might implode.”

“Try to do it away from my bed then,” said Hermione unsympathetically.

“You’re heartless!”

“Yes, you’ve called it. You’ve seen through my evil plan of putting myself in terrible danger to rescue you and then greatly inconveniencing myself with eight and a half months of babysitting, just to make you unhappy. I’m terribly transparent, aren’t I? Why on earth would I want to be back in the present with my friends, taking the classes that I’m supposed to be taking, when I could he torturing you instead? I’m definitely doing it for fun because I’m a heartless, evil person.”

“I don’t need babysitting!”

“The fact that we’re having to even have this conversation implies otherwise.”

“I haven’t done anything stupid.” Sirius crossed his arms and scowled at Hermione.

“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that.”

“You’re being totally psycho with rules. You’re worse than living with McGonagal.”

“I’m being exactly how it’s necessary to be to avoid a horrible calamity,” explained Hermione. “And McGonagal is one of the best teachers at Hogwarts, so I’m not sure how that was supposed to be an insult exactly.”

“You _would_ take that as a compliment,” griped Sirius.

“Look, this hasn’t exactly been a lark for me either!” snapped Hermione. “Do you think it’s been fun for me to be cooped up here unable to leave? Do you think I’m not missing people horribly too? Do you think I wouldn’t kill to get to stop and talk to Ron again?!” She tripped up and flushed a bit, catching what she’d said. “—And Harry of course. Harry too. I’m missing _both_ of them.”

“But you’ll be going back to them without any time missing!” Sirius pointed out. “You weren’t gone from their lives during this time. There’s still a version of you with them right now. You don’t have to just wait around and watch them _replacing_ you.”

Hermione’s eyebrows went up and then settled down into a very smug expression. “ _Oh_ ,” she said knowingly. “ _That’s_ what this is about.”

“This isn’t about anything except that this whole situation is making me crazy!”

“Look, Sirius,” said Hermione, sounding sympathetic for the first time since they started arguing. “Lupin and Tonks weren’t dating when I left to get you. They’re not going to get together just because you don’t intervene in the next two months.”

“What does _that_ have to do with anything?” Sirius spluttered. “I never said anything about that! Why would _I_ care if they start dating?”

“You’re not difficult to read,” said Hermione. “And I agree that I see the potential for that to happen. But you’ll still have time to talk to Lupin about it when the timeline evens out. So don’t worry about it too much, okay?”

“I’m not worried about it,” said Sirius unconvincingly. “I am the _opposite_ of worried about it. I think it’s a bleeding _fantastic_ idea. Absolutely brilliant. She’s disgustingly perfect for him. They’d make a nauseatingly adorable couple. They’d be—just, _ugh_.”

Sirius threw his hands up in the air in frustration and stomped off to a secluded corner to brood.

Hermione gave him a lot of extra space for the next several days.

* * *

The idea wouldn’t get out of his head.

Sirius kept trying to chase it off. He could practically hear Hermione’s voice in his head, overriding his own, less stringent conscience: _Don’t even think about it Sirius,_ she’d say. _It’s too dangerous. Too stupid. You can’t take risks like that. You’re endangering more people than just yourself_.

He could even imagine Remus’s voice chiming in, if he had any idea whatsoever about what was going on, and what Sirius was thinking: _Don’t be daft, Padfoot_ , he’d agree. _It’s a terrible idea. I’m not worth it._

_James_ would have encouraged him, at least. But then he could hear Hermione’s uninvited imagined voice piping up again with: _Maybe you shouldn’t take risk-taking advice from someone who is dead, yeah?_

It’s not that he didn’t agree that it was a bad idea. (Although he disagreed vehemently about Moony not being worth it.) It’s just that the idea wouldn’t leave him alone. And the more he thought about it, the harder it was to ignore the fact that it _might_ work. The idea might be on the harebrained side, but he really saw potential in it. And it was one thing to shoot down something he desperately wanted to do when he knew for a fact that it would end in disaster. It was an entirely other matter to turn his back on something he felt he could probably pull off.

After all, the whole point of not interacting with Harry or Remus was that they couldn’t risk changing the future.

But interacting with them couldn’t change much if they didn’t remember it, could it?

Remus wasn’t himself when he transformed into the wolf. His true personality and primary consciousness got pushed aside, suppressed when the beast took over. He never really remembered anything the next morning when he came back to himself, usually needing Sirius to fill him in on what had happened if he’d accompanied him through the night.

So, how could it hurt anything if Padfoot offered Remus some comfort during the full moon? Remus would have no idea, other than the vague awareness that he had injured himself less than usual. How could Sirius resist offering Remus that bit of solace when he couldn’t see any possible down side?

_He wasn’t being stupid._ Sirius’s mind kept urgently insisting. _Remus needed him_.

* * *

Remus locked himself in the cellar with two-fold relief. He felt the newly usual (disturbing) eagerness for mental obliteration. But also this time he felt tremendously appreciative to be allowed to transform back in seclusion and not in the company of other werewolves. Fenrir’s gang had reveled in running free during the full moon. Remus couldn’t assimilate into their group while maintaining his own regimen of chaining or locking himself up while he transformed. Each full moon he’d spent in their company had been rife with danger that he would accidently hurt someone innocent. Luckily the camp (it had moved location frequently) had always been stationed fairly far from civilization (this decision being made for the safety of the werewolves, not innocent civilians. A camp of werewolves was hardly something that would have been tolerated by wizarding society. Being conspicuous would have inevitably led to several of them being arrested or mobbed.) Due to their distance from other people, Remus was fairly certain he’d managed to escape hurting anyone on these occasions. But he wasn’t _completely_ sure, and that uncertainty tormented his conscience.

The dank stone walls beneath Grimmauld Place should have depressed him, but he was grateful to them. He smiled ironically to himself as he bolted the door.

Not long after, the pain started. No matter how many times he underwent it, the severity always caught him off-guard, ripping guttural screams from his lungs as his bones shifted and his muscles tore and stretched into alien alignments.

Before the physical torment got a chance to subside, the overpowering instincts began to take over, burying his rational thoughts under their urgent demands. Remus used to fight this part of the process, but so long as he was locked away from anyone who could be hurt, he saw no reason to combat it now. He let the predatory drive wash over him, pushing out all of his guilt and depression and worry. The agonizingly complicated state of the world folded in on itself, flattening into a blissfully one-dimensional existence. The future didn’t matter. The past wasn’t relevant. All that existed was the present moment and the wolf. And the wolf didn’t care about _anything_.

_RUN_ , demanded the wolf. _BITE._

_KILL._

Without thought or permission, his legs scrambled against the stone floor, grasping for momentum, only to have nowhere to go. He propelled into the walls, dragging claws against granite and knocking over ancient wooden shelves. Jars smashed and cans rolled, splattering the ground with long-forgotten provisions. He ran across the shattered detritus, not noticing when the broken glass became embedded in the pads of his feet. He didn’t notice anything except for his frustration at there being no prey and no way to get out to find some.

But wait.

The wolf’s frantic struggling slowed as he picked up a scent.

_FAMILIAR_.

Something about it tugged at something in the wolf’s consciousness that went deeper than the instinctual compulsion. He stopped moving to inspect his surroundings.

A flash of black darted around him. Something furry brushed up against his side.

The urgency to hunt subsided a little. The familiar black furry thing had a calming effect that the wolf didn’t understand, but wasn’t inclined to fight.

The overwhelming bloodlust ebbed as the dog (where did it come from? It didn’t matter) playfully engaged him, distracting him with chasing games and affectionate head-butts. His boundless energy was redirected as they ran in circles and jumped and rolled. The night slipped by with unprecedented speed.

The wolf didn’t notice when the mysterious dog vanished again. He was too consumed by the painful transformation to maintain awareness of his surroundings.

When Remus came back to himself he was more disorientated than usual. A sense of something _important_ clung to him, but he couldn’t remember what had happened. He usually felt like he was emerging from a dream as he changed back, but this time instead of feeling like escaping from a nightmare it was more like a sad and nostalgic dream that he didn’t want to wake from.

Since when did transforming back make him _sad_?

Was he finally, truly, losing his mind?

* * *

“I see no evidence of you losing competence,” said Dumbledore calmly, peering over his half-moon spectacles at Remus’s pacing form.

“I think I’m going crazy,” Remus repeated for the umpteenth time. “Something’s not right up here anymore.” He tapped his head. “How can you trust me for important Order missions when I cannot even trust my own mind?”

“Only an arrogant fool has complete trust in themselves,” said Dumbledore with a kind smile.

“I’m not talking about a lack of confidence here!” retorted Remus in frustration. “I’m telling you that I think I’m having _hallucinations_. I’m imagining dead people!”

“That’s not an uncommon coping mechanism with grief,” said Dumbledore solemnly. “The mind often fights hard against the acceptance of loss. It does not mean that you are losing your mind. The important thing is how one reacts.”

“That’s the thing, though. I’m reacting _badly_. I’m embracing the wolf.” He hadn’t wanted to resort to admitting this shameful detail, but Remus was having more trouble than he expected in getting Dumbledore to believe the seriousness of his situation. “Instead of fighting against transforming I’ve been fighting against transforming _back_.”

“Have you hurt any innocents?” Dumbledore asked. “Do you desire to?”

“No,” sighed Remus. “No, I don’t think I have. And no, of course I don’t want to.”

“Then I would say that you still maintain admirable control over your situation,” concluded Dumbledore. “One cannot overcome the darkest parts of one’s nature without intimately confronting them. It is only by embracing one’s true self that one can master it.”

“But it’s not just the wolf thing,” argued Remus. “I’m completely losing it! I keep thinking that I see things that aren’t there! I hear things in an empty house! I smell people who have been dead for months. I feel like I’m being watched _all the time_. Dumbledore, I’m losing my grip on reality!”

“The mere fact that you have come to me with these concerns only strengthens my trust in your judgment. Truly mad people do not have this kind of self-awareness. I see no evidence of your sanity or competency slipping. Quite frankly, the Order cannot afford to lose as valuable an operant as you, Remus.”

“But I don’t trust myself,” he just repeated weakly.

“Then I suppose it’s a good thing that I have enough trust in you for both of us,” said Dumbledore maddeningly. He pulled a small box out of a drawer and offered it to Remus. “Lemon drop?”

* * *

Sirius had felt pretty good about things immediately after the full moon. When Remus first transformed he was violently self-destructing in his usual way. As soon as Padfoot had revealed himself though, he had almost immediately calmed. It had felt like no time had been missed at all, as he and Remus seamlessly fell back into a years-old routine. He couldn’t help reveling in the spark of recognition he found in the wolf’s eye. He couldn’t stop himself from feeling pleased at the minimal injuries Remus had at the end of the night (some cuts on his feet and a few bruises but no deep gouges from claws or teeth.) He was pretty ready to pat himself on the back as he slipped back under the invisibility cloak and watched Remus transition back to human with no sign whatsoever that he remembered what had happened.

Yes, Remus really clearly _had_ needed him, and this had been a stroke of brilliance.

Sirius might have been a little too quick to congratulate himself.

Over the next few days a subtle shift occurred in Remus’s behavior. The depression was still painfully apparent but his listlessness had turned to edginess. His eyes, which for far too long had had a habit of staring blankly at nothing in particular, now were shrewdly darting around as if trying to take in _everything_. Small sounds made him tense. He frequently stopped in the middle of doing things to check behind curtains or pieces of furniture. He was rubbing his temples a lot, and muttering to himself.

Sirius overhead him mumbling things like, “No, it’s just in your head,” and, “I’ve got to hold it together, I can’t crack up at a time like this,” and “Dumbledore’s a fool.”

It was with an increasingly bad feeling that Sirius observed these things, but it wasn’t until the moment where Remus stopped in the middle of a hallway, locked eyes on the _exact_ spot where Sirius was concealed, and breathily whispered “…Sirius?” that Sirius realized that he might have actually screwed up. Like, _majorly_.

For several seconds Sirius forgot how to breathe.

Remus remained frozen, staring, face scrunched up in some sort of internal struggle. Then the tension finally broke as he shook his head and tiredly rubbed his eyes. “…Imaging things…” he muttered as he stumbled off in the opposite direction. “’M completely batty.”

Sirius felt sick as he let himself breathe again. He was torn between utter panic over the fact that he’d done exactly what Hermione had warned him not to do and changed the timeline, and disappointment that Remus hadn’t actually sussed him out and given him an excuse to stop hiding.

What exactly was he supposed to do _now_?

_Stop interfering_ , said the intelligent, rational part of his brain. _Stop, before you make it any worse_.

_It’s too late,_ said the instant gratification half of his brain. _You already messed up so you might as well run with it. In for an inch, in for a mile, yeah?_

“Bollocks,” hissed Sirius as he frantically bolted from 12 Grimmauld Place. “Everything is _bollocks_.”

* * *

Sirius waited apprehensively for some sign that he was about to disappear as the future rearranged itself and undid Hermione’s actions.

Nothing happened.

He waited a little more, less apprehensively, for some smaller sign that things had changed, albeit less catastrophically.

Still nothing happened.

After a week or so of tensely bidding his time he slowly began to believe that he hadn’t impacted things enough for major consequences. But that didn’t mean he still couldn’t royally screw up and make that happen. He really, _really_ needed to start being more careful. Surely he could survive this last month and a half without taking any unnecessary risks?

Sirius promised himself there would be no more stakeouts. He was going to be _careful_. He was going to stay in this stupid condemned old building (that now actually looked quite nice inside thanks to Sirius and Hermione’s efforts) and _mind his own business_.

Of course it was a lot easier to mind one’s own business when one’s business consisted of more than house arrest.

By now he’d run out of unique stuff he could think of teaching Hermione. (For some reason she didn’t seem very interested in learning how to transfigure oranges into dung bombs or any hexes for making your enemies’ clothes stay permanently unwashed. What a waste of a brilliant mind.)

He’d redecorated their hideout at least thirty times already. (It currently was an underwater rendition of the Palace of Versailles. Hermione was clearly not especially happy about the sand everywhere but she was also clearly trying to humor him in order to keep him housebound. Sirius could not resist pushing the envelope.)

He’d even resorted to reading one of her ‘non-academic books.’ (A political commentary about social injustice thinly disguised as a murder mystery.) Sirius did not find it entertaining enough to warrant the migraine it gave him. He got about two-thirds of the way through and quit without even bothering to flip to the end to find out who was guilty. (It also happened that he’d severely lost his taste for murder mysteries since his own unfortunate experience of being wrongly accused and imprisoned. The justice system was a lot more palatable as entertainment when it happened to other people.)

Now there were three weeks left to go and all he could muster to do was mope around and look pathetic. At least when he’d been cooped up like this before he’d had Buckbeak to keep him company. Hippogriffs were definitely better brooding companions than teenage girls. Buckbeak had been full of quiet understanding and had never assaulted him with smug knowing looks that wordlessly implied things like ‘stop being a drama queen,’ or ‘boys are idiots.’

(Not that he wasn’t terribly appreciative of everything Hermione had done for him, of course. He just couldn’t help noticing that they got along a whole lot better when not confined to the same living space for twenty-four hours a day.)

He drew a very sloppy rendition of a hippogriff on the wall next to his bed and spent most of his remaining time forlornly staring at it.

Buckbeak II wasn’t much of a conversationalist though, which left Sirius alone with his own thoughts.

Thoughts which kept getting stuck on Remus.

Remus, who apparently now thought he was going insane, and it was all Sirius’s fault.

Remus, who could get killed on a mission if he were too distracted by his paranoia of being crazy.

Remus, who would probably use that suspicion as a basis to do something obnoxiously self-sacrificing like having himself voluntarily committed to St. Mungo’s.

At that thought Sirius sprung out of bed, seized by an overwhelming need to _check on Remus_ and make sure he was in fact still at 12 Grimmauld Place and not in a padded cell in the no-visitors section of the hospital.

He was halfway across the room before he forced himself to skid to a stop.

_No!_ He chastised himself. _No, no, no. You can’t do that anymore. He’s on to you. He’ll notice. It’s the one thing you could do to make everything worse. If he ends up at St. Mungo’s it will be because you drove him there._

_Stop panicking, Padfoot. You’re working yourself up for no reason. Even if that idiot tried to do something drastic, the others wouldn’t let him. The rest of the Order is looking out for him._

_He has Dumbledore._

_He has Molly and Arthur Weasley._

_He has…Tonks._

For some reason that last reassurance didn’t make Sirius feel better.

* * *

Sirius awoke, not to coral chandeliers and floating bubbles filled with seahorses, but to plywood covered windows and bits of broken linoleum.

“What happened to our digs?” He asked in a sleepy daze.

“They’re not ours anymore,” announced Hermione with a relieved smile. “Today’s the day. We get to go home. I’ve put everything back to how it was.”

“Really?!” Sirius jumped up with an enthusiasm he hadn’t felt in months. “We can leave? Without hiding? _Now_?”

“Not quite,” said Hermione, holding out a hand to stop him from sprinting out of the building. “We have to time this very carefully. We can’t return even a minute before I left. And once the timing is right we have to return the time-turner to Borgin and Bourke’s. I only intended to borrow it, not steal it.”

“It could come in mighty useful another time,” Sirius pointed out.

“The last thing we need is the sort of people that frequent Borgin and Bourke’s hunting us down for stealing,” said Hermione disapprovingly. “And I don’t know about you, but I think I’m pretty done with time travel for quite a long while.”

“Excellent points,” said Sirius agreeably. “Lead the way then.”

* * *

It was funny how nervous one could be, simply crossing the threshold into their own house.

Sirius had expected to bolt through the front door as quickly as he could, but some unseen gravity seemed to pull at him, causing his feet to drag as he approached.

Was he doing the right thing, coming straight here? He probably should have gone to see Dumbledore first. That would have been the most responsible thing to do. Dumbledore needed to know that he was alive and that the Order had one of its members back.

And what about Harry? If anyone deserved to find out first that he wasn’t dead, surely Harry ought to get that privilege.

But Harry was at Hogwarts right now, while Sirius was already in London. And it just didn’t seem right to immediately rush off to Hogwarts when there was someone else also in London who as well deserved to find out what had happened.

He rationalized that it was more urgent to see Remus, due to the fact that he’d messed with his sanity a bit with his carelessness.

He just needed to straighten that out. Then they could go to Hogwarts together and have a proper reunion. Harry would certainly like that.

“Are you okay?” Hermione directed a questioning gaze at Sirius as she noticed him trailing behind as they approached the door.

“Yeah,” said Sirius, with a bit of a manic edge to his voice. “I’m great. Never better. This is excellent. _I’m_ excellent. Everything’s peachy. Just peachy keen. Oh my god, did I actually say that? Merlin’s pants, who even talks like that? That’s a weird phrase, come to think of it. Where do you think that even came from? Search me. Ready to go in? I’m absolutely ready. Hope Kreacher doesn’t answer the door. He’s not exactly my ideal welcoming committee. Not that it’s likely, that little snot rag never does anything he’s supposed to—”

Hermione cut Sirius’s babbling off with a glare.

“Kreacher doesn’t live here anymore,” she said primly. “You left him to Harry in your will. And Harry sent him to work at Hogwarts.”

“I did? He did?” asked Sirius in surprise. “Er, yeah. Of course I did. And good. Good riddance. Harry’s a smart bloke.”

Hermione did not return Sirius’s awkward grin. He watched her grind her jaw as if working herself up to say something distasteful. (Or perhaps trying to stop herself from saying something distasteful.) In the end her civility won and she just silently turned and knocked on the door.

They waited several seconds for an answer during which Hermione’s valiant effort to bite her tongue apparently failed.

“You know,” she said sharply, turning back to glower at Sirius, “what with the horrible abuse you direct at him, it’s hard to blame him for what he did to you.”

“Wait—what?” said Sirius. “Did what to me? What are you talking about?”

“He sold you out to the Death Eaters,” she announced.

Sirius’s jaw dropped open in horror. “ _What?_ ” he squawked. “He did _what?_ ”

“I thought you knew,” she said in a smug voice that clearly betrayed that she was perfectly aware this was news to him. “I would have expected you to have figured it out after the way he attacked Buckbeak to distract you. You know, if you’d just been _nicer_ to him….”

“That was _him_?” shrieked Sirius. “What the _hell_? Why that sleazy little bleeding git! Just wait until I get my hands on his scrawny little neck—”

Sirius was no longer facing the door when it finally creaked open. Startled by the noise, he swung around, mouth still frozen open mid-rant.

“Wha-what??” Remus stood in the doorway, eyes stretched wider than Sirius had ever seen them.

“Ah—I, er—ah—” Sirius’s brain picked that moment to stop functioning properly. All of the greetings and rushed explanations he’d planned on opening with promptly fled his mind.

“ _What?_ ” yelped Remus, a bit more hysterically.

“Ah— _hi_ ,” Sirius finally managed. He grinned, hoping his demeanor might make up for his sudden incapacity for verbal communication.

Remus did not break into a return grin like Sirius had hoped. He didn’t tackle him in a hug, or even just politely smile. Nor did he take several steps backward as if he’d seen a ghost like Sirius had rather feared he might. No, Remus Lupin whipped out his wand and with a shaking hand pointed it right at Sirius.

“Wait, Remus, what—”

Sirius never got to finish his question, as the crimson blast of Remus’s stunning spell knocked him off the steps. 


	3. Readjustments are in Order

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius just wants things to go back to how they were (but better.) He wasn't counting on everything being so strained.

When he regained consciousness Sirius found himself unceremoniously sprawled on the carpet of the entrance hallway.

“What in the name of Morgana’s saggy tits was _that_?” sputtered Sirius, pulling himself to sit up.

Remus’s face remained stoic, and he still had his wand out.

“I can explain!” gasped Hermione, wringing her hands. “I’m sorry! Maybe we should have sent an owl to warn you we were coming! I can explain everything!”

“He’s the one who owes an explanation!” said Sirius indignantly, pointing at Remus. “ _We_ didn’t stun anyone!”

Remus returned the finger point by pointing his wand. “What,” he said in a voice that was shaking even worse than his hand, “was the password to Gryffindor common room on our first day at Hogwarts?”

“Blimey, mate, how would you expect me to remember _that_?”

“Answer the question, or I’m going to assume you’re an imposter and I’ll blast you again.”

Sirius sighed and closed his eyes, searching his memory for that obscure fact.

“Hen’s teeth,” he announced in triumph, as the detail obligingly popped into his mind.

Remus’s frown wavered. “Any Gryffindor from that year could have answered that,” he commented unhappily. “I should have thought of a harder question. What did—”

“Moony, it’s _me_ ,” Sirius interrupted in exasperation. This was certainly not shaping up to be the heartwarming reunion he had been fantasizing about.

“What was I wearing the day you almost got Severus killed?”

“You know, most people can’t even remember what their friends were wearing yesterday,” complained Sirius.

“Yes, well,” said Remus tersely. “That particular day happened to be extremely memorable for all parties involved.”

Sirius sighed. “You were wearing your school robes. Overtop of a charcoal grey cable-knit jumper, with a hole in the elbow, which you got when we were mucking about in the Forbidden Forest after curfew, and your sleeve caught on some brambles. James offered to fix it, but you told him not to bother because your grandma Howell knitted it and she always made the sleeves too short so—”

Remus cut off Sirius’s overlong explanation with a wave. “Legilimency,” he said with a shake of his head. “You must be using legilimency.”

“I’m pants at legilimency,” scoffed Sirius. “If I could do legilimency I’d know what to say to make you actually _believe_ it’s me!”

“It—it can’t be you!” Remus choked out. “You’re dead! This must be a trick. Polyjuice potion, that must be it. Mundungus was selling your things—someone must have gotten their hands on a hairbrush. It would be simple to—”

“Moony, it’s really _me_.” Sirius staggered to his feet and risked grabbing Remus by the arms. “I’m not dead.”

“I watched you die,” hissed Remus in a strained voice.

“—Anymore,” Sirius tacked on. “I’m not dead, _anymore_.”

“That’s _impossible_.”

“Tell that to Little Miss Brainypants over here,” said Sirius nodding towards Hermione.

Hermione smiled awkwardly in confirmation. “It’s true!” she said anxiously. “We fixed it!”

Remus narrowed his eyes at Hermione. “What form did Neville Longbottom’s boggart take during my class you attended on that subject?” he asked her.

“It turned into Snape,” she replied quickly.

“That’s _Professor_ Snape, Hermione,” Remus automatically corrected.

“Well, if anyone was in doubt that you’re the real Remus Lupin, I think we can all rest easy after that swotty retort,” said Sirius with a roll of his eyes.

Remus didn’t answer. His gaze kept trailing up and down Sirius’s body as his face cycled through a variety of different expressions—disbelief, amazement, suspicion, _anguish_ ….

“You shouldn’t take for granted it’s me,” he finally muttered disapprovingly. _Everyone_ is supposed to be checking with safety questions.”

“Okay, fine,” said Sirius. “What did we find in the Room of Requirement when we hid there after filling the dungeons with bouncing bulbs in fifth year?”

“A lifetime supply of dog food,” replied Remus with a wry smile. “We never did let you live that down, did we?”

“I was hungry when we walked past the door,” said Sirius with a shrug. “It’s not like I actually _ate_ any.”

“When we were looking,” snorted Remus.

“Hey,” said Sirius defensively. “I _didn’t_.” He let his hands slide off Remus’s arms and took a step towards the drawing room.

Remus’s wand was back to pointing in his face, his knuckles gripping the handle so tightly all the color leached out of his skin. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To sit down. This is _my_ house.”

“No,” said Remus tensely. “This is _Harry’s_ house. Because Sirius Black is _dead_.”

“Argh, you’ve got to be kidding me! I’m not dead! Although Harry can keep the house, if he wants. I hate this dump.”

“Professor Lupin,” said Hermione cautiously. “This building is under the Fidelius Charm. We wouldn’t have been able to enter if we were imposters. We wouldn’t have even been able to _find_ it. You know we have to be who we say we are.”

“You could have tricked the Secret Keeper,” said Remus stubbornly.

“So now you think that you’re smarter than Dumbledore?” asked Sirius incredulously. “Seeing through things he’d miss?”

“No.” Remus slouched, finally letting his wand hand fall limp, the argument draining out of him. “No, I’ve never thought that. I’m just trying to convince myself I’m not hallucinating, is all. They don’t usually get this vivid. Well, come on in. I’ll start some tea water.”

“That’s it?” complained Sirius, trailing after Remus as he shuffled down to the kitchen. “I come back from the bleedin’ dead and all you have to say is ‘I’ll make some tea’?! No hug? Not even a ‘gee, I’m glad you didn’t snuff it, Sirius. It was crummy having you dead.’ What am I? Chopped bubotubers?”

Remus’s mouth twitched as he turned his head back towards Sirius. “Polyjuice potion can take up to twelve hours to wear off. I’m trying to withhold my reaction until I’m absolutely sure.”

“ _Twelve hours!_ ” Sirius and Hermione exchanged a disbelieving look.

“Yes, twelve hours,” Remus confirmed. He pulled a dented brass pocket watch out from his robes and studied it. “You have…eleven hours and forty-three minutes to go until I’m ready to start taking you seriously.”

“It only lasted for _one_ hour when I brewed it,” muttered Hermione. Sirius couldn’t tell if her irritation was due to the inconvenience of being interrogated for hours on end or the revelation that she had brewed a subpar version of the potion. Probably the latter, he decided.

“What exactly are we supposed to do for these eleven hours and forty-three minutes of you suspiciously watching us, exactly?” asked Sirius.

“Well,” said Remus, handing each of them a hot mug, “I’m rather interested in finding out how you allegedly defied death. Start talking.”

* * *

Remus did a lot of frowning as the story unfolded, leaning forward in his seat with his chin propped on his hand. He kept looking at Sirius as if he were some sort of complex puzzle. His frowns exacerbated whenever Hermione admitted doing something especially dangerous or illegal (although Sirius thought he detected a hint of envy beneath the teacherly disapproval.) It took them about two hours to run out of details to tell. (They could have drawn it out longer, but Sirius glossed over all the stalking he’d engaged in.)

“That’s…remarkable,” said Remus finally.

Sirius waited for him to say something else.

The room stayed silent.

“And?” prodded Sirius. “You…believe us?”

“I believe,” said Remus slowly, pushing down absent mindedly on his finger joints as he looked at them, “that if it is possible to do the things which you just described to me, that Hermione Granger would be capable of pulling it off.”

Hermione beamed.

“But…”

The single word cut through the air like a scythe.

“…It’s asking a lot to believe it is possible.”

Sirius flopped back in his chair in frustration. “Bloody hell. In the eight and a half months I spent imagining what it would be like to see you again, this is _really_ not how I predicted it going.”

“Well,” said Remus stiffly. “You might have had eight and a half months to think about _that_ , but I spent the last _nine_ months coping with your death. That’s a lot of processing you’re asking me to undo.”

“But don’t you _want_ to?” asked Sirius in frustration.

Intense emotion flashed in Remus’s eyes, but he quickly shuttered back into composure. “ _Obviously_ ,” he said raggedly. “More than—” He cut himself off. “We should summon Dumbledore, and see what he makes of all this.”

“I refuse to summon _anyone_ before I get to see Harry,” objected Sirius. “I can’t believe I let us waste this much time already. I guess it was a mistake to come here first. Come on Hermione, let’s go.”

Hermione began to get up, but froze as she made eye contact with Remus. He had his wand out again and was shifting it back and forth between her and Sirius.

“You came to see _me_ before Harry?” he asked in a strained voice.

“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?” retorted Sirius.

“…Why?”

“Dunno. I’ve been asking myself that same question for the past two hours, haven’t I?” snapped Sirius. “I guess I thought you might be glad to see me!”

“But—I—I mean of course—but—” Remus stuttered.

“Oh for heaven’s sake!” Hermione marched over to stand between them. “Professor Lupin!” she said sharply. “I understand this has been a great shock, but you _know_ it’s really us. I know that you know it. You’re just afraid of letting your guard down because you don’t want to be wrong. And Sirius—” she turned to direct her frown at the other man in the room. “Stop giving him such a hard time. _You_ know better than anyone how much he’s been struggling with this!”

“How would he know—?” Remus began to dazedly question but Hermione didn’t let him finish.

“I’m going to go get Harry now,” she said authoritatively. “Because Harry was the entire point of this whole thing in the first place. Please try not to blow each other up while I’m gone!”

With a _crack!_ she vanished from the room.

“I didn’t know she could apparate,” said Sirius in surprise.

“Just got her license,” said Lupin conversationally. “Er…well. Just got it in my time frame. I guess it’s been a few months for her now, or…?”

They looked at each other and trailed off into awkward silence.

“I’m going to be _so_ hacked off if you turn out to still be dead after all of this,” Remus finally said.

“Me too, mate,” said Sirius with a pained chuckle. “ _Me too_.”

* * *

Sirius stood silently, not really sure what to say. He had spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to finally come back and see everyone. Most of his predictions had involved people dropping whatever they’d been holding in shock, and then dashing forward to smother him in a crushing hug. That’s what people were supposed to do when reunited with lost people they cared about, wasn’t it? The way Remus was reacting; he’d almost think he didn’t care. Except he knew that he must, mustn’t he? Sirius had witnessed him falling apart. So why didn’t he seem happier to see him?

“Sorry we didn’t let you know right away,” he finally said. “Believe me, I _wanted_ to. Hermione practically had to physically restrain me from messing with time, and all that.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been alive all this time.” Remus shook his head in disbelief.

“If you can call it living,” Sirius attempted to joke. “I was nearly dying of boredom all those months. It was dreadful.”

The pained look on Remus’s face made Sirius wish he’d kept his mouth shut.

“I mean, not that you didn’t have it worse! I’m…sorry. I’m sorry you had to spend all that time thinking…well. Maybe I’m being presumptuous assuming that you missed me, but—”

“ _Missed you?_ ” Remus let out a broken laugh. “How can you even question—? Not a day went by that— Erm, well. It’s been difficult.” He’d thrown his arms out while talking but then let them limply fall at his sides. He looked a bit embarrassed.

“I missed you too, you know,” Sirius offered. He took a step towards Remus. “So…are you done threatening to blast my face off yet?”

Remus glanced at Sirius and then looked down at his wand. He shrugged and slipped it inside his robes. “I’m still not sure what to think of all this,” he admitted.

“Me either, to tell you the truth,” said Sirius. “And I’ve had eight and a half months to mull it over. All we can do it take it in stride, I guess.” He took another step towards Remus.

“I suppose,” Remus echoed, sounding a bit lost. He reached out and tentatively touched Sirius on the shoulder. He looked as if he was uncertain whether or not his fingers would connect with an actual living person, or perhaps would simply melt through a mirage. Once the contact was established he squeezed, giving it a firm grip. “Glad to have you back.”

Sirius slightly shook his head at the strangeness of having Remus act so awkward around him. He reached out and yanked him into a proper hug. At first it was kind of like hugging a tree, Remus had gone so tense and still. He was about to let go when an arm (one that had been noticeably stronger and steelier the last time they’d embraced, three years ago,) wrapped around him. For several minutes Remus clung to him as if he expected Sirius to disappear without warning.

“Sorry,” Remus muttered as he backed away. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his robes.

“The only thing you should be sorry for,” replied Sirius, “is not doing that sooner.”

One side of Remus’s mouth drew up. “Well…sorry for that too.”

* * *

Hermione reappeared at the boundary of Hogwarts and began the long trek across the grounds towards the castle. As she went she cursed her decision to apparate instead of just using the floo to send Harry a message. Apparating had definitely not been the most efficient way to get somewhere that had an apparting restriction on it…but she’d been so frustrated by Sirius and Remus that she’d wanted to remove herself from their company as quickly as possible.

 _Boys_ , she thought to herself sarcastically. _What is their problem? Do I even know any that aren’t more emotionally defunct than a footstool?_

She took a moment to seriously consider the state things had been in with Harry and Ron right before she’d left, and some of the conversations she’d been having with Ginny about it.

 _No_ , she concluded. _I certainly don’t._

* * *

When she arrived in the common room, Harry was nowhere to be seen. Ron did so happen to be there, but Hermione was no longer certain that that was a plus. She stood there a moment, unsure what to do next.

She caught Ron starting to look up to see who had come in, but he abruptly put his head down and pulled his book up like he was thoroughly absorbed in his homework.

Maybe she should just wait here until someone else came along that could run up to the boys dormitory to fetch Harry…

 _No_ , she chastised herself. _You can be the mature one._

She walked over to Ron and cleared her throat.

He didn’t look up.

“Ron,” she said loudly.

“Oh, so now you’re suddenly talking to me, are you?” grouched Ron from behind his book shield.

“What?” she said. “You’re the one who wasn’t talking to _me_.”

“Wrongo mate,” said Ron. “I think I can tell when I’m being blatantly avoided.”

“No,” she began, “it was definitely you who…” she stumbled mid refute. Actually, she could no longer remember the exact circumstances of their silent stand-off. She knew without question that Ron had been the first one to act like a prat. But who had officially begun the silent treatment part was a bit fuzzier in her mind. It had happened months and months ago for her. And in that time she’d spent a noticeable bit more energy missing Ron than resenting him. The whole thing just seemed so _stupid_ now. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not avoiding you. Is Harry in the dorm? I need you to go get him.”

“Oh sure, I should have guessed you’re only talking to me because of _Harry_ ,” complained Ron.

“Ron!” she said in exasperation. “This is really, _really_ important!”

Something in her tone of voice made him take notice. Ron’s petulant expression melted into a concerned one. “Did something bad happen?” he asked uneasily.

“No,” she reassured him. “No, it’s something good. But we need to get Harry _immediately_. It really is important!”

“Alright, alright,” said Ron, flipping his book shut and dropping it on the table. “I’ll get him. Just a mo.” Ron disappeared up the steps to the boys tower.

Hermione paced back and forth in front of the fire while she waited. After a few minutes Ron and Harry rushed down and looked at her anxiously for an explanation.

She pulled out Harry’s invisibility cloak and indicated for them to get under it.

“I hope you’ve both finished your homework,” she said. “Because we’re going to 12 Grimmauld Place, and I don’t think you’re going to have a mind to do it once we get there.”

* * *

Harry’s jaw dropped open when he walked in the door. As they traveled, Hermione had remained maddeningly tight lipped about what was going on, deflecting all of his questions with ‘wait and sees’ and ‘it will be easier to believe in person.’

She was, he had to admit, right about that. (As she was with most things.)

“Sirius!” he gasped. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, hardly daring to believe what he was seeing.

Sirius swung around, a broad grin splitting his face as his eyes landed on his godson. “Harry!” he said enthusiastically.

There were a million questions rushing through Harry’s mind as he tried to process what he was seeing. None of them seemed as important though as sprinting down the hallway and throwing his arms around Sirius.

Sirius hugged him back with a fierce possessiveness that Harry had never felt before (not that he had a lot of hugs to compare it to, he’d certainly never received any from the Dursleys.)

“How…?” he stuttered. “What— _how_?”

“See?” he could hear Sirius saying to someone behind his back. “ _Harry_ can tell it’s really me.”

The comment served to dampen his happiness a little. That the man he was hugging might _not_ be Sirius had never crossed his mind. Which was rather stupid of him, really, considering he’d already been fooled by a doppelganger of Mad-Eye Moody for an entire year.

But on the other hand, this wasn’t some stranger he’d never met before, it was his _godfather_ , and Hermione had been the one to bring them together, so surely she’d already worked out that it was really him.

Harry reluctantly pulled back to give Sirius a more appraising look.

He looked exactly as Harry remembered, right down to even being in the same clothes he’d been wearing the day he died.

“How are you alive?” asked Harry in wonder. “I mean, you _are_ alive, right? You’re not just some extra-corporeal type of ghost or an inferius, right?”

“I’m definitely alive,” reassured Sirius.

“Permanently?” he couldn’t help asking. “This isn’t just because of some spell with a time limit or anything, right?”

“Well I don’t think that anyone could say that they’re alive _permanently_ ,” chuckled Sirius. “But I certainly hope to have several years still on the table. This isn’t a spell.”

“This is—this is amazing!” The smile reformed on Harry’s face. “How is this possible?”

“That,” said Sirius pointing at Hermione, who had until now just been quietly standing next to a gaping Ron, “is her story to tell. I can’t exactly take credit for doing much. Except getting on her nerves a lot.”

Hermione snorted.

Harry and Ron both fixed her with questioning gazes.

“Let’s go find somewhere comfortable to sit,” said Hermione. “It’s a long story. I’m sorry Professor Lupin, but you’re going to hear it twice.”

“I imagine that might make it easier to swallow,” replied Remus amicably.

* * *

Hermione ended up having to tell her story several more times. They’d all talked late into the night. The next day they attempted to summon Dumbledore, but he was apparently away on an unspecified mission. It didn’t seem right calling together an official Order meeting and telling everyone _except_ Dumbledore…so the news got passed on haphazardly in small increments, starting with Molly and Arthur Weasley.

Molly engaged in a lot of motherly fussing and offered to make Sirius a jumper because ‘It can’t be good for you to have worn the same clothes you died in for nine months straight!’

Sirius declined and promised he’d go shopping before the week was out.

(And then reveled in the fact that he _could_ go shopping—or anywhere else for that matter. Being a free man felt _amazing_.)

Tonks called on them the following day. Sirius was fairly certain that he would have slammed the door in her face if she hadn’t looked so obnoxiously genuine in her happiness that he was still alive. He had no choice but to invite her in.

He _really_ wished he hadn’t.

She might have been delighted that he was alive, but Sirius was clearly not the reason she was visiting. Once in the door, Tonks made a beeline for one Remus J. Lupin and did not veer from his personal space until it was time for her to reluctantly head back to Hogsmeade. She laughed at nearly everything Remus said (to be fair, so did Sirius,) and let her hand bump into his when she passed him things, and she was _definitely_ playing up her clumsy streak just to force Remus to steady her when she tripped over things. Sirius was appalled by how transparent she was. He was appalled that Remus either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. (He refused to dwell on the fact that it was most likely the latter.) All in all, Sirius noticed his fingers compulsively flexing a lot that day.

Not long after it was Kingsley Shacklebolt who came to visit. Sirius knew he should be glad, Kingsley had been responsible for thwarting the Ministry’s attempts to arrest him after all, and he’d need Kingsley’s help in getting all his legal documentation sorted out. It was just the timing that got to Sirius. With all the commotion going on, he hadn’t had a moment alone with Remus since that awkward exchange in the hallway as they’d waited for Hermione to fetch Harry and Ron.

Luckily Kingsley wasn’t really the type to linger around for idle chit-chat. He acted authentically pleased to see Sirius again, discussed business matters with them, and then excused himself.

The silence that followed in his wake was bad enough that Sirius almost wished he would come back.

Remus kept looking like he was about to say something but then kept not saying it. Sirius kept _meaning_ to say something, but couldn’t figure out what to say.

What does one say in a situation like this, anyway? It’s not like you can come back from a nine-month absence where everyone thought you’d died and just start discussing the weather.

Well, Sirius supposed that he _could_ do that, but he wasn’t about to resort to it.

The real problem was that he had an awful lot that he wanted to talk to Remus about. But doing so would require revealing that he’d been secretly hanging around and watching him. And he wasn’t sure yet if that would go over very well. It was better if he started out cautiously.

It got so bad that Sirius resorted to washing the dishes from tea the Muggle way, just to have an excuse for his lack of talking to seem purposeful.

“Well.” Remus finally breached the silence. “I, ah—suppose you’ll want some help packing?”

Sirius dropped the cup he’d been washing.

“Packing?” he echoed. “Why would I need help packing?”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” said Remus, misinterpreting Sirius’s question. “I don’t suppose you’d want to take anything in this place with you.”

“Um…care to fill me in on where I’m going?” asked Sirius.

“You’ll be moving out, won’t you?” asked Remus, sounding as surprised as Sirius felt. “You hate it here. You’ve always hated it here. You hated living here with your parents and you hated living here while you were hiding. I rather assumed that since you don’t have to hide anymore you’d be moving out as soon as possible.”

“Oh.”

Sirius turned around and leaned back on the counter. Remus was absolutely right. He _did_ hate 12 Grimmauld Place. He had been absolutely desperate to leave before.

But that was… _before_.

He still despised this house as much as ever. But that didn’t really seem as pressing a problem now that he actually had the option to come and go freely. Besides, Remus was still here. It had never even crossed his mind that he wouldn’t just go back to living with Remus. He didn’t especially want to move out if Remus didn’t come with him.

“Er…” he stalled. “I mean, I guess I’ll be moving out eventually. Will you be leaving too?”

“Oh,” said Remus, equally flustered to have the question turned around on him. “I wasn’t really planning on it. It’s been very kind of you and Harry to let me freeload here and not have to worry about things like rent. But if you wanted, I could leave instead. I’m sure I can manage to find some other arrangements.”

“Moony,” said Sirius with a frown. “I didn’t mean to imply that I _wanted_ you to leave.”

“Oh, said Remus again. “Well. That’s good, then.”

“You’ll be staying here as long as you want,” Sirius insisted. “And you’ll _definitely_ not be paying rent.”

“That’s…very appreciated,” said Remus. “So…you’re not leaving right away?”

Sirius shrugged. “What with all the security on this place, it would be a lot safer for Harry to visit me here than if I moved somewhere else,” he reasoned. “So I don’t see a point in rushing anything.”

“Ah, yes. That’s rather smart thinking,” agreed Remus. He shifted, some of the tension relaxing from his posture. “I suppose we should tidy the place up a bit, then. I’m afraid I let things go a bit while you were…not here.”

“It doesn’t matter. Although I suspect there are some boggarts we ought to get to banishing,” said Sirius.

“Yes,” confessed Remus. “There’s definitely a few.”

Sirius pulled out his wand and flipped it in a flourish. “Well, what are we waiting for then?”

* * *

Remus really was better at banishing boggarts than anyone Sirius had ever known. Watching his friend effortlessly make them disappear was fascinating—and also a bit troubling, because Sirius couldn’t help dwelling on the fact that for all these months he hadn’t been bothering to do so.

“You’re really good at this,” he said as Remus vanished his seventh boggart.

“Yeah, well. Didn’t have much choice in the matter, did I? My dad specialized in them. I had to learn fast or I would have had an utterly terrifying childhood.”

 _You had an utterly terrifying childhood anyway_ , thought Sirius. He kept the thought to himself.

“Boggarts all over the place. Worst ‘bring your kid to work day’ ever, ha.” Remus grinned, but it looked a bit forced.

“I would have picked that over any day at all with my parents,” admitted Sirius.

The fake grin dropped off Remus’s face. “Yes. Fair point.”

“So…” said Sirius, figuring that so long as he’d already managed to dampen the mood he might as well go the whole hog and just say what he was thinking. “Any particular reason you let them get so out of hand?”

“No,” said Remus quickly. “I was just busy. There was a lot going on so I didn’t get around to it.”

 _It just now took you only five minutes_ , thought Sirius.

Okay, so Remus definitely wasn’t going to be forthcoming about how he was doing. Well, it’s not like Remus being cagey was anything new.

“What sort of stuff did I miss?” asked Sirius instead. “I hope you had a lot of killer parties in my memory.”

Remus suddenly looked rather like he was about to throw up. “No,” he said hoarsely. “No parties. I can’t say anyone felt much like celebrating.”

“Pity that,” said Sirius lightly. “I’ll have to update my will for next time. I absolutely demand that all my leftover money gets blown on the world’s most extravagant blowout. I’m thinking something along the lines of a swimming pool filled firewhisky and a troupe of dancing hippogriffs. Make sure all of the Holyhead Harpies are invited. And—hey, maybe you should be taking notes.”

The I’m-about-to-be-sick look on Remus’s face got exponentially worse at Sirius’s casual mention of ‘for next time.’

“Hey,” said Sirius, noticing the effect he was having on Remus. “Hey, Moony, I’m just joking.”

“ _Don’t_.” Remus backed up and leaned against the wall to steady himself. “Don’t—don’t joke about that. It’s not funny. There was absolutely nothing funny about you—”

“I know,” admitted Sirius, feeling bad for upsetting his friend so much. “I’m sorry. I’m just not really sure what to say about it all. You know, you’d think that all of the years of etiquette lessons I had to sit through as a kid would have prepared me for this, but for some reason they never covered ‘how to act when you return from the dead.’ I’m kind of navigating blind here.”

“Imagine that,” said Remus with a weak smile. “The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black failed in etiquette.”

“I know,” said Sirius. “It almost makes me wish the old hag were still alive just so I could watch her have a heart attack from disappointment.”

“You could always go taunt her portrait if that would make you feel better,” said Remus, his smile strengthening. “Although personally I prefer the noise level staying where I can still hear myself think.”

“Well I’d hate to stop you from thinking,” said Sirius. He poked Remus’s head with one finger. “Heaven forbid.”

“You wanker,” muttered Remus.

“Now you’re sounding like the old Moony. I’ll admit you had me a bit worried for a while there.”

“You complete and utter _wanker_.”

“So I guess you _did_ miss me, huh?” said Sirius with a grin.

“Like you need to ask.” Remus mock punched him in the shoulder.

“Well you know how my ego is,” egged Sirius. “It can never have too much validation.”

“Sirius Black,” said Remus, looking him seriously in the eye. “If you ever go and die again I swear I will kill you.”

“The feeling’s mutual mate.”

* * *

The weird tension that had been strung between them since Sirius returned finally broke, and Sirius and Remus fell back into a pattern more similar to how things had been before the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. It was similar, but better, because Sirius was no longer house bound, so he no longer felt like spending half of his time sulking and feeling sorry for himself for being left out of everything. On the other hand, it was also worse, because now he still felt like sulking, just for other reasons—namely due to the fact that certain people (er, make that _person,)_ kept stopping over uninvited all the time.

Sirius wasn’t sure why this annoyed him so much. It was stupid, he kept telling himself, that Tonks was getting under his skin so much. She was nice, and funny, and an admirably good auror—all qualities he totally respected. He should be _glad_ she wanted to spend time around him and Remus.

Maybe it was the auror thing that bothered him, he wondered. He’d been feeling very resentful of the way he had to sit out all of the Order business while he was in hiding. It drove him absolutely crazy to have to stay home and wait while everyone else was out _doing stuff_ to make the wizarding world safer, and more importantly, keeping _Harry_ safer. He hated feeling inept and it had been a bit difficult not to simmer in envy as he watched his relative who was 14 years his junior get to jaunt about being competent and useful and doing exciting things.

Yeah, that had to be it. He was jealous that she was an auror—it made perfect sense. The whole bit where she was constantly hanging off of Remus was just some sort of coincidence and probably had absolutely _nothing_ to do with Sirius’s recent uncharitable feelings towards her. He was definitely bothered by her superior career status. After all, saying ‘I’m an Auror’ sounded a hell of a lot more impressive at parties than ‘I’m a disinherited socialite with a criminal record and no future prospects.’

Right. Glad he cleared that up.

Well. His brain might have settled the mystery of why-does-Tonks-drive-Sirius-mental but apparently the rest of his body failed to get the memo because he still found himself suffering from a compulsive eye twitch every time she leaned affectionately against Remus or coaxed a chuckle out of him with a witty anecdote.

Did he actually _like_ that?

He couldn’t possibly, right?

It looked so annoying. He was probably getting annoyed to pieces and was just too polite to ever say anything about it.

Didn’t she know? Couldn’t Tonks _tell_ that he was just an overly nice person and would allow people to walk all over him because he was an effing _werewolf_ and had just gotten used to being treated like a second class citizen? She shouldn’t be taking advantage of that. She should be more conscientious of that and respect his space and respect his right to not be surrounded by such _annoyingness_ all the time.

(Apparently Remus had gotten so good at accommodating people over the years that he could manage to not even look annoyed at all. How did he pull that off? Sirius would like to master that trick. Starting right now, preferably.)

The larger the group, the harder it was for Sirius to conceal his own fluctuating temper. Which was bad because he found himself included in groups a lot now. He had wanted so badly for so long to be properly included in Order business again. Now he’d finally gotten his wish but he was finding the Order meetings a lot less desirable to be at. Mainly because he now had to sit through listening to Tonks petition Dumbledore to put her and Remus together on stakeouts (requests that were usually granted in spite of Sirius’s suspiciously frequent objections.) And worse were the hints that Dumbledore occasionally dropped about wanting Remus to resume his post with the werewolves. (Over Sirius’s dead body. He had to restrain himself from vaulting across the table and grabbing Dumbledore by his beard any time the topic came up.)

It was probably because his patience was already strained from the stress of these things that he failed to keep himself in check during the after-meeting socializing.

Molly was passing around a tray of biscuits and not-so-subtly trying to impose them upon Remus in particular. Instead of shielding him from the unwanted advance, Tonks joined forces with her, piling Remus’s plate with an epic proportion of sweets. Remus might have been skilled in hiding that he was being annoyed by affectionate gestures, but he was not bothering whatsoever to conceal his frustration over the force-feeding. Neither woman noticed as Remus’s expression became increasingly put-upon.

Sirius’s patience snapped.

He strode over and snatched the plate out of Remus’s hands.

“I’ll take those, thanks,” he said sharply.

“Hey!” objected Tonks. “Those were for _Remus_.”

“Remus doesn’t want them!”

“Of course he wants them,” retorted Molly. “He always has some of my biscuits after the meetings.”

“He might want some if you actually let him choose them,” said Sirius. “But you’re giving him the wrong ones.”

“Don’t be daft,” scoffed Tonks. “Those are his favorites.”

“These are definitely _not_ his favorites,” said Sirius confidently.

“Yes they are,” said Tonks, pointing at the stack of chocolate dipped shortbread. “He loves them.”

“I don’t see how he possibly could,” argued Sirius. “Moony hates chocolate.”

“What?” said Molly.

“Don’t be silly,” said Tonks. “He can’t stop eating it.”

“Actually…” Remus began.

“Chocolate is his _favorite_ ,” assured Molly.

“Hates it,” repeated Sirius.

Suddenly everyone in the room was staring at Remus. Remus looked like he would have been glad for an invisibility cloak just about then.

“You _do_ love it, right?” prompted Tonks, a quiver of uncertainty marring her voice.

“Well…” Remus started staring at an apparently interesting bit of wallpaper.

“You always eat several,” Molly reminded him.

“Yes. Well…” said Remus.

Everyone continued to stare at him.

“I’mnotactuallythebiggestfanofitactually,” said Remus hurriedly.

“What?” said several people in the room.

“Ha!” said Sirius, triumphantly stuffing a piece of shortbread in his mouth.

Tonks had an expression on her face akin to a child being told that Father Christmas wasn’t real. “But you always have it!” she said disbelievingly. “You eat it more than anyone!”

“Yes, well.” Remus looked a bit sheepish. “It’s got medicinal qualities. And I’ve, ah, got an elevated need for medicine due to my…condition.”

“He needs it but it’s got bad associations so he doesn’t enjoy it, in other words,” explained Sirius smugly.

“Oh,” said Tonks.

“I see,” said Molly.

“Um, sorry,” said Remus.

Everyone continued to stare at Remus in shocked disbelief. He continued to look as though he wanted to melt into the floor.

“I’ve always preferred fizzing whizzbees, myself,” announced Dumbledore cheerfully.

* * *

After the meeting Remus and Sirius retreated to the study at 12 Grimmauld place for a drink.

The silence was companionable this time, rather than awkward, but it still took three bottles of butterbeer for Remus to overcome it.

“I never told you I dislike chocolate,” he finally said.

“Pfft, like you needed to.” Sirius snorted and waved his hand like the very idea of him not knowing was ridiculous. “You make a face. There’s a very specific Moony face you make only when you’re eating chocolate. It’s like it’s personally offended you just by existing. And it’s always twice as bad when someone else has made you feel obligated to eat it, because you’re obviously trying to look appreciative but your smile goes all crooked and pained looking.”

“No—no I don’t,” said Remus disbelievingly. “I don’t make a face.”

“Yes you do. You make several faces. I could draw up a diagram of all your I-hate-chocolate expressions. Heh! I could call it ‘phases of the chocolate moon’. I should do that. Too bad I’m useless at drawing.”

“A diagram is quite unnecessary. Especially since I _don’t_ make faces.”

“You do.” Sirius smirked. “But it doesn’t matter. I’d know anyway because you always gave me your chocolate when people gave you some. You had that one particular type of bar from Honeydukes that you seemed to find more tolerable than others, and you’d keep that on hand for emergencies. But when girls would give you boxes of the fancy stuff you’d always hand it off to me and James and Peter. I think Peter used to get jealous that I always got a bigger share of it.”

“That was _years_ ago,” said Remus in amazement. “How can you even remember that?”

Sirius’s smirk faded a bit. “Not a lot of what happened in the last fifteen years is stuff you’d want to think about. I probably dwell on the good old days more than most people bother.” He shrugged.

It was a sobering statement. Remus felt a stab of guilt that in spite of all his own difficulties, he hadn’t been through nearly as much hardship as Sirius. He couldn’t even imagine what all of that time in Azkaban must have been like. He fell silent for a moment, wondering if Sirius wanted to talk about it, or if it would be too painful a topic for him.

“What was it like—” Remus began, meaning to ask about Azkaban and then diverting as he saw Sirius stiffen in obvious anticipation. “—dying I mean.”

Okay, maybe that wasn’t any better of a topic. He hadn’t meant to ask that. It must have been the butterbeer loosening his tongue. He had been wondering about it though. An awful lot, really.

“I have no idea, mate,” said Sirius with another shrug. “According to Hermione, I didn’t die.”

“But you went through the veil,” said Remus. “She didn’t stop you from falling. I _watched_ it happen. All she did was pull you out. _You went through the veil_.”

“I guess so,” said Sirius with a frown. “Can’t say I remember any of that.”

“You don’t remember falling?”

“There’s a lot I don’t remember. I was really confused when I got out. I think the gap in my memory is bigger than the two weeks I was stuck in there. I might as well have been dead because everything is completely blank.”

“That’s probably for the best. The look on your face as you realized you were falling was one of the most terrible things I’ve ever seen. You wouldn’t want to remember that.”

“I don’t know.” Sirius’s frown deepened. “I don’t like knowing that things in my head are missing. And who’s to say that it was only my memory that got damaged? I haven’t been quite right since I came out.”

“You’ve seemed pretty normal to me,” said Remus carefully.

“Oh, it’s not stuff that would show. Headaches, mostly. Trouble focusing. My hand shakes sometimes when I’m writing. Sometimes I have very strange dreams. Small stuff. It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t complain when the trade-off is being alive.” Sirius idly picked up a butterbeer cap and flicked it with his thumb as if none of the things he was saying were very important. “Don’t mention it to Harry. I don’t want to needlessly worry him. I’m alright.”

“That doesn’t sound so small to me,” said Remus quietly.

“It’s not the things themselves so much that get to me. It’s more like that they’re constant reminders that I’m not supposed to be here. It’s a strange feeling.”

“You _are_ supposed to be here.” Remus surprised himself with how emphatic his own voice came out. “You’re supposed to be here so much that the universe rearranged itself just for you.”

Sirius scoffed. “The universe didn’t have any agenda for me whatsoever,” he dismissed. “Hermione Granger decided to tell the universe who was boss, and she unsurprisingly won.”

“She’s a very bright witch,” said Remus, smiling fondly. “I’m not surprised she accomplished that. She was a delight to teach.”

“Yeah,” agreed Sirius. “She was, wasn’t she?”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “Did I hear that right? Did you just imply that _you_ were teaching?”

“What?” said Sirius. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“This from the person who told me no less than two hundred and eighty-six times that he had a fatal allergy to homework? Yes.”

“I was stuck with her for eight and a half months, you know. What else were we supposed to do?”

“You. A _teacher_ ,” Remus just said with a disbelieving shake of his head.

“More like irresponsible mentor,” corrected Sirius. “And it was her idea. I was just bored.”

“I shudder to think what sort of skills she acquired.”

“As you should.” Sirius smirked.

“I’m actually surprised that you both came out of that in one piece. I’m impressed.”

“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” Sirius’s smirk slipped again, and his striking grey eyes fixed on Remus suspiciously.

“Just that I would have half expected you two to kill each other after having no one else to mediate for over eight months,” explained Remus. “You both have um, rather forceful personalities. I would have expected some incompatible clashing.”

“Why? Do you find me that difficult to live with?” asked Sirius guardedly.

“What? Me? No. Of course not.” Remus was very much regretting having said anything. “Not at all.”

“Well then, I don’t see why you think _she’d_ have a problem with me. She’s an awful lot like _you_ , you know.”

“Is she?” asked Remus in surprise.

“Sickeningly so. She’s like a little Mini-Moony.”

Remus frowned skeptically. “We got along very well in our educational relationship, but I don’t think we’re actually _that_ similar,” he said.

“Sure you are,” contradicted Sirius. “Lucky for me she didn’t go to school with us or she would have totally replaced me as your mate. How could I compete with all those books?”

Remus blinked and looked at Sirius as if he’d just said something in Gobbledegook. “What?”

Sirius was now staring at an unopened bottle of firewhisky on the sideboard. He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Just something I’ve been pondering,” he muttered.

“Sir— _Padfoot_ ,” said Remus. “There isn’t anyone who could have replaced you as my friend. That’s completely crazy.”

“I dunno,” said Sirius. “Maybe. But anyway. I told you I didn’t think I’ve been quite right since, you know. You should probably get used to me sounding crazy.” He made a twirling gesture next to his head with his finger and laughed sharply.

Remus watched disapprovingly as he lunged sideways and snatched the bottle of firewhisky, sloshing a generous portion into an empty glass.

“I didn’t mean to imply that _you_ are crazy. You’re not. _Or_ damaged,” Remus assured. “Look, honestly, if anyone has been going round the bend it’s _me_.”

The statement did not have the bolstering effect on Sirius that Remus had hoped. Sirius shrank a little farther back into his chair and stared fixedly at his glass. “Oh?”

“This is rather embarrassing,” admitted Remus. “But for a lot of the time you were dead I kept imagining you were actually here.”

“Yeah?” asked Sirius in a strained voice. He took a huge gulp of his firewhisky and started coughing from swallowing it too fast.

“I did,” sighed Remus. “I mean, I realize now that you _were_ actually still around. But I mean I felt like you were _right here_. If I didn’t know better I would have thought I was being haunted.”

“Oh,” mumbled Sirius. He slowly looked up, a shifty, guilty expression flickering across his face. “Look Remus, I—”

Remus tensed, sensing that Sirius was about to say something important. For a second his heart leapt in anticipation, imagining that he was about to hear a confession from his best friend.

A very stupid thought, obviously.

Sirius suddenly chucked back the end of his firewhisky and slammed the empty glass on the table. A wide grin stretched unnaturally across his face.

“Of _course_ you’re not a nutter,” he declared. “I mean, how could anyone help thinking about me constantly? It’s only natural you’d think I was still here. I’m too legendary to forget.”

Remus scowled in annoyance. Was Sirius making fun of him? Had he sensed what Remus was secretly hoping he’d say, and rubbing it in his face how wrong he was? Reminding him that _he_ was the one who had spent years besotted with Sirius, and not the other way around?

 _No_ , Remus reminded himself. _Sirius wouldn’t be that cruel. He can’t know. He’s just being his usual insensitive and idiotic self._

That knowledge did not stop Remus’s chest from aching at his friend’s flippancy, though.

“So,” Sirius quickly added, before Remus had a chance to contradict him. You. Tonks. Something’s obviously going on there. Spill the details.”

“Er…there are no details,” said Remus. “We’re just friends. We get together and talk sometimes. There’s nothing to tell.”

“Come on, Moony,” complained Sirius. “I’d have to be blind to not see there’s something going on. Maybe it hasn’t started yet, but it sure wants to start. What’s the deal?”

“There really is no deal,” said Remus, crossing his arms. “We’re friends. Dora and I found we have some common ground. She’s been very kind to me when I’ve been…out of sorts.”

“Dora, hmm?” said Sirius knowingly around a sip of his drink (which he had somehow managed to refill without Remus even seeing.)

“That’s her name.”

“No it’s not,” said Sirius. “To the general public her name is _Tonks_. Only her parents call her Dora. _I_ don’t even call her Dora.”

Remus shrugged, wondering why Sirius was interrogating him so hard on the topic. Did he disapprove of the idea of him being with his cousin? If so, why wouldn’t he just get on with it and say so? Did he think that Remus would refuse to respect his wishes?

“She told me to call her Dora,” he said simply.

“Because she’s got a thing for you,” said Sirius. He was staring at Remus intensely.

Remus shrugged again. “She might. But that doesn’t mean anything is going on.”

“Why the bloody hell not?” asked Sirius.

Remus blanched. That was definitely not a question he was prepared to answer truthfully. At least, not out loud.

 _Because it wouldn’t be fair to her_ , chimed in Remus’s heart. _I’m too hung up on someone else_.

“Because I wouldn’t be good for her,” he said instead. It was only slightly less accurate than his primary reason.

“Now that’s the biggest load of troll dung I’ve ever heard you drop,” objected Sirius. “And that’s including that terrible tale you told McGonagall about the invisible marmoset that ate your transfiguration essay.”

“ _You_ were the one who actually ate my transfiguration essay,” Remus reminded him.

“Stop deflecting,” said Sirius. “That’s irrelevant. You’d be bloody brilliant for her and you damn well know it.”

“Oh yes,” said Remus with a roll of his eyes. “An unemployable werewolf who’s almost twice her age. I can’t think of a more ideal prospect.”

“ _Moony_ ,” said Sirius warningly.

“Don’t you _Moony_ me!” said Remus testily. “You’re the one who’s pressing this! I’m perfectly content with the way things currently are.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow and leveled him with an obnoxiously disbelieving stare. “Are you really then?” he asked. “You’re totally content right now?”

“Yes,” said Remus sternly.

 _No_ , contradicted Remus’s heart.

Sirius just kept regarding him silently and running his finger along the rim of his glass. “Good,” he finally stated.

“Yes,” Remus reiterated. “It’s good. Everything is _good_.”

* * *

If he didn’t look too closely, Sirius could almost believe that everything actually _was_ good.

Remus was doing a first rate job of pretending that everything had gone back to normal. If Sirius hadn’t already been over-analyzing everything he would have taken it at face value that Remus was doing better now that he’d come back and he had no reason to grieve.

Remus might have actually improved slightly, it was true—but he wasn’t _better_ -better. Sirius had spent enough time living with him at school, watching him trying to cover up the after-effects of his transformations and brush all his pain and discomfort off as no-big-deal, to see through him. He knew when Remus was downplaying. Remus gave himself away with the barely detectable trembles in his hand; in the half-eaten bits of food left behind on his plates; in the one-second-too-long pauses when people talked to him; in the way he never ever accidentally touched Sirius anymore. That last one was the most alarming. As kids Remus and Sirius had had an easy camaraderie. They horsed around all the time, never hesitating to elbow the other in the side, or sling a casual arm around a set of shoulders. Perhaps as adults they hadn’t been quite so physical with each other, but they had certainly never been _uncomfortable_.

Remus was absolutely acting uncomfortable now and it caught Sirius off guard how much that hurt. It was as if Remus thought that Sirius was a taboo spirit that had returned, and one wrong move would banish him back to the underworld.

Sirius wanted to call him out on it, but how could he? He wasn’t supposed to know how Remus had been doing while he was gone. Remus didn’t know that Sirius had been watching and had seen just how bad he’d gotten. Without that point of comparison Sirius probably would have accepted Remus’s attempts at projecting that he was fine.

He almost couldn’t blame Molly and Tonks for trying to force-feed Remus all the time. It was hard not to have that reaction while watching him slide into his complete disregard for self-care.

(He did still blame them though. Just on principle.)

Sirius knew better though than to think that such an approach would actually work. Remus wouldn’t listen to anyone if they were forcing him to do something. When Sirius had found out that he was a werewolf, he hadn’t dealt with it by lecturing Remus to be more careful. He’d dealt with it by becoming an animagus and _being there for him_. He needed to be there for Remus now. The only problem was, how?

Whatever thoughts were tormenting Remus currently was a bit harder to guess than what was bothering him about the werewolf situation. Werewolves were a problem that manifested physically, and had tangible consequences he had to safeguard against. Sirius might not have ever experienced being a werewolf himself, but there were known parameters.

This current Remus, with his stricter boundaries and sad eyes and hesitant mannerisms was unknown territory. Sirius was determined to figure him out though.

Shaking things up a bit seemed like a good way to start unraveling him.

“Want to go on holiday?” he cheerfully suggested at breakfast.

“On holiday?” Remus echoed. He set down the piece of toast he’d been spreading lemon curd on and looked at Sirius in confusion. “Like...take a trip?”

“Yeah!” said Sirius enthusiastically. “Exactly like taking a trip!”

“But…we’re supposed to be staking out Death Eaters,” said Remus.

“I’m sure we could find some Death Eaters to stake out in a more scenic location,” said Sirius. “But it wouldn’t have to be a long trip, anyway. We could just get away for a day or two.”

“Well…alright. I suppose we could do that. I’m sure you’re very ready for a change of scenery after everything you’ve been through,” agreed Remus. “Where did you want to go? The Lake District?”

“I was thinking something more like Tortuga.”

Sirius enjoyed the look of surprise that flashed across Remus’s face.

“That’s very far away,” said Remus.

“That’s kind of the point,” said Sirius. “We need a change of _scenery_. Distance is hardly a problem when we can travel by magic. We might as well go somewhere _interesting_.”

“The Lake District _is_ interesting,” objected Remus.

“Too samey,” Sirius disagreed. “Too British. Too boring.” He waved his hand around. “You could use some sun. What better place to get it than the pirate capital of the world? As Marauders I think we pretty much owe that a pilgrimage. What more appropriate place to stake out Death Eaters?”

“I don’t actually think that the Caribbean is a prime Death Eater hot spot currently,” said Remus.

“Exactly. Guaranteeing that our holiday will be relaxing. It’s absolutely perfect. You haven’t really lived until you’ve sent your post by toucan instead of owl.”

“I also don’t think toucans live in Tortuga,” Remus commented dryly.

“See?” said Sirius. “You’re practically already an expert on the place. We have to go.”

Remus was staring at him with a bemused and slightly exasperated look. Sirius could see him mentally grappling with the suggestion, simultaneously wanting to agree and shoot him down. The old Moony wanted to go. But he was fighting with the new, tired, and obligated Remus. The Remus that thought it was perfectly reasonable to ask him to sleep in a field with werewolves for weeks but that springing a beach holiday on him was crazy.

Remus’s eyes dropped downwards towards his legs, as if he could see all of his scars right through his trousers. He busied himself with scrapping out the lemon curd jar.

“I’m sure no one wants to see this old wreck in a bathing suit,” he muttered.

 _Tonks would_ , thought Sirius (with surprising bitterness.) He cut himself off though before he managed to say that aloud. He didn’t especially want to bring her up while trying to make personal plans with his friend. Remus might ask to bring her along or something. Ugh.

“You’d be surprised,” Sirius said instead. “But if you don’t want to wear one, no one’s forcing you. You can wear a jumper covered in seashells for all I care. The point is just to go someplace interesting.”

“Ah, yes. That’s exactly what I should do. I can’t think of anything more relaxing than passing out from heat stroke.”

“That’s the spirit!” Sirius grinned. “So, are you ready to start packing?”

Remus sighed audibly. “I don’t suppose you’re going to bend on this idea.”

“Nope.”

“You deserve to get away a bit,” Remus conceded. “You’ve spent more than your fair share of time in confinement.”

“Exactly,” confirmed Sirius. “You bet.”

“We have to be back well before the full moon. I’m not willing to transform someplace unfamiliar. It’s too risky.”

“Wouldn’t dream of planning it any other way.” Sirius nodded.

“I actually don’t even own a swimsuit anymore,” Remus pointed out.

“Well _that’s_ certainly easy to remedy!” said Sirius, grinning broadly. “I promised Molly that I’d go shopping anyway. I’ll pick one out for you!”

“I’m going to regret this,” sighed Remus.


	4. Undercover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius and Remus get some bonding time in...before everything goes to hell.

“Hm,” said Sirius, frowning slightly as he surveyed the beautiful and pristine (and completely deserted) beach. “I thought it would be more…moreness.”

“Like having a place to stay that doesn’t involve breaking into some Muggle’s house, perhaps?” ventured Remus.

“Yeah.”

“And maybe a food source?”

“That didn’t involve me having to cook…yes.”

“You didn’t actually know anything at all about Tortuga when you suggested it, did you?”

“I…heard about it somewhere,” said Sirius vaguely. “I spent some of my time on the run in Costa Rica. I kind of assumed it would be more like that.”

Remus shook his head and pulled out his wand. “Fortunately we’re not dependent on the Muggle tourism industry to get by,” he said.

With impressive skill, Remus levitated several fallen trees and branches and transfigured them into a cabin-like structure.

“Wow,” said Sirius, impressed. “Nice one, Moony.”

Remus shrugged. “I’ve had a bit of experience in needing to get by without proper accommodations by now,” he said. “This is quite easy compared to Scotland in the winter.”

Sirius frowned hard at the reminder that Remus had been struggling so much over the years that he was gone.

“You didn’t spend most of the time I was gone living like that, did you?”

“Not the majority, no,” replied Remus. “Just when things got tight between jobs. Everything was up in the air a lot. But I mostly got by.”

“You shouldn’t have to just ‘get by,’ Moony,” said Sirius unhappily. “You were one of the most brilliant students at school. You should be insanely successful by now.”

“Yes, well,” said Remus, turning around to pick up some firewood away from Sirius (which he could have just summoned by magic, Sirius noted.) “You shouldn’t have spent twelve years locked up, shouldn’t you? Life isn’t exactly fair.”

“It’s going to get better,” said Sirius confidently. “Things are going to turn around. I have an awful lot of confidence in Harry’s generation.”

“Your optimistic confidence is what landed you in Azkaban,” Remus pointed out.

“I’d say it’s what got me _out_ of Azkaban,” Sirius countered.

“It’s also…” Remus trailed off for a moment, seemingly fascinated with the log he’d just salvaged. He spent several long seconds turning it about and getting it aligned with the other bits of wood in some ideal campfire position. “It’s also what got you killed,” he finally mumbled quietly.

“Well that’s hardly fair,” complained Sirius uncomfortably. “I can’t defend myself about something I don’t remember happening.”

“There would be nothing to defend,” said Remus stiffly. “It was quite cut and dry. You _taunted_ Bellatrix. You egged her on. You practically _invited_ her to kill you.”

“Did I?” asked Sirius in surprise.

“Your confidence was suicidal,” said Remus. “I cannot…I cannot tell you how many times I’ve wondered how differently it might have turned out if you hadn’t said those things to her.”

A part of Sirius wanted to retort with ‘ _so you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about me, eh Moony?_ ’ but he knew that the timing was completely inappropriate. It really was a sign he’d grown up, he supposed. The young Sirius would have said that.

“I’m…sorry?” he offered instead.

“You almost got Harry killed as well, you know,” added Remus harshly. “He tried to go after you. I had to hold him back. If I hadn’t been there….”

“I…what?” gasped Sirius. Now _there_ was a detail no one had filled him in on. The air suddenly felt thicker and difficult to breathe.

“You should have known he would!” Remus turned around abruptly, finally looking at Sirius straight on. Sirius was taken aback by how angry he looked. It was possibly only the second time Remus had ever been visibly angry with him.

“Of course he would!” Remus continued. “You should have thought! You should have known better! You should have—” he cut himself off and took a deep breath, shrugging as if he could shed the entire matter easily. He turned back to the pile of wood and conjured a ball of fire with his hand, which he directed down to alight the logs.

“You’re mad at me?” For lack of a better comeback, Sirius stated the obvious.

“Of course I’m bloody well mad at you!” muttered Remus, back to not making eye contact. “How could you have done that to m—to _Harry_ ,” he amended. “How could you be so stupid to do that to Harry?”

“I—” Sirius was at a loss. He didn’t know what to say. Had he really done something that risky? It was hard to connect with Remus’s anger when he couldn’t remember doing the deed that had incited it. The thing was though, Sirius _could_ see himself taunting Bellatrix. It _was_ something he would do. He didn’t doubt that he fully deserved Remus’s resentment.

“Thank you for stopping Harry,” he finally said. “You’re a better guardian than I am.”

“That’s bollocks,” snapped Remus. “I’m a bloody awful guardian. I’m too wrapped up in—well. He needed _you_. Needs. Don’t pull another stunt like that.”

“I won’t,” said Sirius.

Remus shook his head and poked listlessly at the fire. “I wish I could believe you,” he said sadly.

Sirius opened his mouth to assure Remus that he could, but the words wouldn’t come out. The problem was, he couldn’t quite believe himself either.

* * *

“ _Accio fish!_ ”

In an attempt to move on from the awkwardness of their altercation, Sirius set about trying to remedy their lack-of-food issue. He was having trouble though, as the summoning charm required being able to clearly visualize the thing he was summoning, and Sirius had no idea what type of fish lived in the waters around Tortuga. Eventually he had to resort to wading out into the water and waiting for something to swim by so he could catch a glimpse of what to summon.

“Are there sharks here?” asked Remus. “You’d better not have survived all that stuff only to get eaten by a shark in Tortuga. I’m really not up for having to explain that to Harry.”

“It’s fine,” said Sirius (who had no idea really if it was or not.)

“Keep an eye out for sharks,” replied Remus reprovingly.

“You’re really determined to not enjoy your beach holiday, aren’t you?”

“I’m having a smashing time,” deadpanned Remus. “I just love getting sand in my trousers and watching my friends get eaten by large carnivorous fish.”

“You wouldn’t have sand in your trousers if you’d change into the swim trunks I got you like a normal person,” retorted Sirius. “I think you’ve just developed an allergy to fun or something. What happened to the old Moony?”

“I dunno,” said Remus, crossing his arms. “He’s probably unconscious in a ditch somewhere. Let me know if you find him.”

“Ah ha! Success!” exclaimed Sirius as a tiny minnow sized fish flew into his hand. He promptly threw it at Remus.

“Hey!” exclaimed the werewolf.

“ _Accio fish!_ ”

He threw a second minnow at Remus.

“Stop it!” objected Remus.

“Stop what?” said Sirius, tossing another fish.

“You’re getting me all wet!”

“Oops, how terrible,” laughed Sirius. “Guess you’ll have to change into your trunks.”

“I don’t want to!” grouched Remus.

“Why the hell not?” asked Sirius. “It’s about a million degrees out. You should come in the water, it’s much better over here.”

“I don’t like wearing stuff like that, okay?” Remus glared. “It makes me self-conscious.”

“What the hell for?” pressed Sirius. “No one’s even here except for me. It’s not like I haven’t seen you go swimming before.”

“That was practically half a lifetime ago,” replied Remus. “I’ve had a lot more transformations since then. I…don’t look the same.”

“I don’t care!”

Sirius had meant the statement to be reassuring, but apparently it was the wrong thing to say. Remus flinched and looked down at the ground.

“Look, it’s not like _I_ look the same either,” said Sirius, gesturing at his own body. “Azkaban gave me its complimentary ghoul-look-a-like makeover. Don’t see that stopping me though, do you?”

Sirius was honestly surprised by how unconcerned he really was. There had been a time when he had valued his looks very much. He’d enjoyed to no end the attention they garnered him in school, and the edge they gave him in getting away with things. But a lot had happened since that point in his life. After spending twelve years with no other thought in his head than _I want to kill Peter Pettigrew_ , he’d found that there hadn’t really been a lot of room left in his desires for superficial trivialities. Surviving and staying out of prison had transformed into his dominant concerns. Sulking about his faded appearance just seemed like a waste of time.

“You don’t look bad,” mumbled Remus, still staring fixedly at the ground.

“Pssh, don’t lie,” said Sirius flippantly. “I look like death warmed over.”

Oops. Again that was the _wrong_ thing to say.

Remus’s head jerked up, panic blazing across his features at the word ‘death.’

“ _Sirius_ ,” he said warningly.

“Sorry,” said Sirius. “That was thoughtless.”

Remus raked his hand through his hair and looked up at the sky. He shook his head and finally turned back towards Sirius, side-eying him.

“You don’t look bad,” he muttered. “You’re a bit more weathered than before, but it works for you. You look distinguished. It’s not like….” He trailed off.

Sirius’s eyebrows shot up. “You think I look distinguished?”

“Er…” Remus was now pointedly looking everywhere except at Sirius. “Yes?”

Sirius felt his face split into a grin. “I dunno, mate. I feel like I ought to be offended. That almost sounds respectable.”

“You _are_ respectable, you twat.”

“I definitely must be doing something wrong then. _Accio fish!_ ” Sirius flung another minnow.

“Hey!” spluttered Remus.

“Oops.” Sirius laughed.

“Could you please _not_ ,” said Remus.

“No can do,” said Sirius. “You’d better put on your trunks and come out here and make me.”

“Padfoo—okay, _fine_!” Remus threw his hands up in the air and spun around, stomping off to the makeshift cabin. He remerged a few minutes later in his bathing suit, arms crossed defiantly.

It was only because Remus had made such a big deal about his appearance that Sirius looked. He definitely wouldn’t have found his eyes sliding along his friend’s body as intently as they were without the provocation. How could he not after Remus made a fuss like that?

Remus hadn’t been wrong; the years _had_ left him drastically more scarred than the last time Sirius had seen him like this. But Sirius didn’t particularly see that as a problem. Remus had always been covered with scars. They made him unique, and Sirius found it interesting. Remus’s uniqueness was just a bit further accentuated now. Sirius would even go so far as to say that he liked it. Underneath the scars Remus was fairly attractive, and the contrast of the imperfections did more to emphasize that than mar it.

His gaze probably lingered a few seconds longer than was appropriate. Remus surely noticed, going by the faint tinge of pink that spread across his cheeks and the way his arms tightened across his chest.

“Help, I’m blind!” Sirius exclaimed jokingly in an attempt to cover his faux pas. He slapped his hand over his eyes.

“You—” Remus stuttered, apparently too flustered to come up with an appropriate insult. He splashed into the water and shoved Sirius under.

“Merlin! You’re _hideous_!” Sirius gasped dramatically, as he broke back up through the water.

Remus glared at him.

“—ly attractive,” Sirius finished, bursting out in loud snickers.

“You’re _such_ a git,” said Remus. He was trying to maintain his glare but the edge of his mouth was twitching.

“You love that about me,” said Sirius confidently. He scooped up a handful of water and dumped it over Remus’s head.

Remus coughed, which Sirius thought was being a bit over-dramatic for the measly amount of water he’d splashed him with. Remus was suddenly looking back towards the beach.

“I’ll bet you’ve been _heinously_ bored without me around to be a gigantic git to you,” he pressed, experimentally knocking against Remus with his elbow. To Sirius’s relief Remus didn’t jerk away.

Remus let out a long and pointed sigh. “It’s true,” he admitted. Suddenly his arm darted out with lightning speed and snatched an impressively large fish out of the water. He spun around and vigorously knocked Sirius in the head with it. “It _was_ quite boring.”

“Hey!” sputtered Sirius.

“I’ve got dinner.” Remus’s voice was the most cheerful it had been all day as he splashed back to their campfire.

* * *

“Werewolf instincts,” said Remus for the third time.

“Oh come off it mate,” complained Sirius. “You can’t just attribute every impressive thing you do to ‘werewolf instincts.’ Since when were werewolves renowned for their tropical fishing skills?”

“That’s because it’s a werewolf secret,” said Remus smugly, taking a bite of his roasted fish. “Only werewolves know.”

“That’s rubbish. You’ve just gotten better at wandless magic while I was gone.”

Remus shrugged noncommittally and grinned.

“I could have done that in dog form,” Sirius muttered.

“Mmhmm,” said Remus in a tone that did not sound very convinced.

“Could’ve,” he insisted.

“You can be in charge of breakfast then,” said Remus. “Try not leave too many chew marks on the fish.”

“Yours will be extra chewed,” remarked Sirius. “Nice and slobbery.”

“Maybe I’ll have coconuts for breakfast,” said Remus.

“Since when have you been afraid of a little dog slobber?” objected Sirius. “It never put you off at school.”

“I had very low standards back then. I mean, just look at the crowd I hung out with.”

“Hey!” said Sirius. “I’ll have you know that your crowd was the absolute _epitome_ of class. We were tops.”

“Tops, yes,” said Remus with a dry smile. “Classy? No. I think your memory might have been a bit affected.”

“We were classy as all get out,” argued Sirius. “I’ll bet no one else has ever pulled pranks off with as much finesse as we did. Remember that time we hexed Snivellus so that he grew feathers and couldn’t stop talking in rhymes for a week and a half? A more plebeian operation would have just chucked a dung bomb at him and been done with it. We were too classy for that.”

“I suspect that Severus would disagree with you,” said Remus.

“Well what would he know about class?” asked Sirius. “He sure hasn’t got any.”

Remus just shook his head. “That _was_ a pretty brilliant prank,” he conceded.

“They were _all_ brilliant,” reminisced Sirius. “Those were the days.” He stretched his legs out in front of him and dug his toes into the white sand. “It sort of feels like being back then doesn’t it? Being out here.”

“A bit,” agreed Remus. “If you switched the sand for moldy dead leaves, and the fish for giant spiders, and the palm trees for the Forbidden Forest, we’d have a dead ringer for back then.”

“I didn’t mean the location,” sighed Sirius. “I meant the camping out. We used to run off and rough it all the time.”

“I’ve actually spent a lot more time camping out in the years after school than during,” admitted Remus. “I’m not sure my associations are quite as nostalgic as yours.”

“Well it’s the company that makes all the difference,” said Sirius. “I’m only being nostalgic about _Marauders_ campouts. Believe me, I roughed it my fair share while running from the aurors, and that was hardly an experience I’m going to willingly recreate. No more sleeping in caves for me, thanks.”

“Caves are pretty uncomfortable,” mused Remus. “Not my favorite. Though the lack of rain is a plus.”

Sirius snorted. “Just listen to us! How is it that we’ve ended up having something like _that_ in common? Sleeping in caves? What a bunch of sorry sods we grew into!”

“I don’t think we’ve done that badly, actually,” said Remus grimly. “We actually _got_ to grow up. Can’t really say the same for a lot of our friends back then. At least we’re alive.”

“Yeah,” said Sirius quietly. He stared at the fire, feeling the sharp pain of James’s absence with renewed poignancy. Not to mention the twinge of guilt at the unspoken reminder that he himself nearly _hadn’t_ been alive.

“Sorry, I always go and ruin the mood,” mumbled Remus after several minutes of somber silence. He picked up a seashell and pretended to study it. “I’ve turned into a right wet blanket.”

“Nah,” retorted Sirius with a laugh. “You were always a wet blanket. That’s why we kept you around. We needed you to stop us from blowing ourselves up.”

“I didn’t do a very good job at that, did I?”

“You would have been a hell of a lot less fun if you had. I seem to recall you blowing yourself up at least twice.”

“Both times were your fault,” pointed out Remus.

“I deny everything.” Sirius put his hands up in the air and smiled amicably.

“Save it for the jury,” muttered Remus. Then an expression of horror splashed across his features as he apparently remembered the fact that Sirius had never gotten a jury. He’d been thrown in Azkaban without so much as a trial. “Er, sorry,” he said awkwardly.

“It’s fine.” Sirius waved the tactless comment off, and was surprised to find that he meant it. Usually any sort of reminder of the unjust technicalities of his incarceration sent a spike of anger coursing through him. But Remus had always been good at keeping Sirius’s head on straight. He felt like he could talk to Remus about pretty much anything.

“I feel like everything could be fine if we just stayed out here and didn’t go back,” Sirius absently commented, glancing up at the dimming sky. “All the terrible stuff feels awfully far away.”

“I feel like that all the time,” Remus confessed. “It never works, though.”

* * *

When he was younger, Sirius had been a deep sleeper. He slept a lot, and soundly, to the point where his friends would often have to shake him awake to stop him from sleeping through his classes. He used to brag that he could sleep through anything; even an invasion by giants wouldn’t get in the way of his beauty rest.

That tendency had been thoroughly stomped out of him by his life as a fugitive. He’d had no choice but to learn how to keep eternally on guard, only sleeping lightly, with his senses on constant alert. There was no genuine rest for the hunted.

He wasn’t being hunted anymore per se, but it was hard to shake the habit.

Perhaps that was why he started awake in the middle of the night with the sense of a gaze on him making his skin prickle. There was no noise, no movement, but Sirius’s nerves were tightly strung and aware that _something_ was off.

He turned over to find a set of very awake eyes fixed on him. Eyes that should have been green, but had been washed out by the moon-streaked darkness into a muddy monochrome, along with the rest of Remus’s face.

“Moony?” he asked tentatively.

“Sorry,” said Remus, flipping over so that he was lying on his back instead of his side and as a result no longer looking at Sirius. “Hard to sleep.”

“Not comfortable?” asked Sirius. They hadn’t especially put a lot of effort into their sleeping arrangements. Together they’d taken some large palm fronds and transfigured them into blankets and pillows, which they’d tossed rather carelessly onto the sand without bothering with anything so respectable as a bed frame or mattress. By Sirius’s standards it was a perfectly acceptable configuration—blankets on top of sand was downright luxurious compared to the long months he’d spent on that rocky cave floor. But he realized belatedly that it was probably rather sorry accommodations to most other people.

“No it’s fine,” murmured Remus. “Just general insomnia. I haven’t been sleeping well for a while.”

“I know,” said Sirius, hoping to convey the empathy he felt.

“Huh? How would you know that?”

Sirius gulped. In his sleepy haze he’d forgotten that Remus didn’t know that he knew as much as he did.

“I can tell by looking at you,” he covered. “You’ve been looking tired all the time.”

“Oh.” Remus didn’t really sound like he bought the excuse, but luckily he didn’t press it.

“Nightmares?” asked Sirius.

“Yes, but that’s nothing new,” said Remus. “Been getting those pretty much since the first war started. Pretty used to them.”

“Me too,” confessed Sirius. “They’re usually about James and Lily. It doesn’t matter how much older I get, when I fall asleep it’s like no time has passed at all. They’re still alive usually…but something will always be off about them. You know, sometimes they’ll be there, but they’re terminally sick and everyone knows they’re going to die but we can’t do anything about it. And it’s just this horrible sense of desperate _waiting_. Other times they’re fine but they’ve turned into Death Eaters. The worst is when they come back from the dead. They’re somehow okay and themselves again. But they hate me. They’ve just come back to tell me it should have been me instead.”

“It should _not_ have been you,” said Remus forcefully. “It should have been Peter.”

“Yeah. I keep telling myself that. But apparently my subconscious doesn’t buy it.”

“Even if it shouldn’t have been Peter, it still shouldn’t have been you either,” Remus insisted.

“It shouldn’t have been _them_ , Moony. I had Death Eaters in my family. I grew up in a house steeped in dark magic. James and Lily were too _good_. If it had to be one of us it would have made more sense to be me. Look, it was my terrible judgment that caused them to trust Peter, wasn’t it? I always bollocks everything up.”

“I’m an actual dark creature,” Remus reminded him. “That’s much worse than simply being related to dark wizards. By your logic it should have been _me_.”

Sirius sat up abruptly. “No!” He was utterly horrified that Remus would have arrived at that conclusion due to something _he_ had said. (There he went, fulfilling his own prophecy of bollocksing everything up.) “Never,” he stated. “You are the _last_ person if should have been. You were the best of us.”

“That’s rubbish,” muttered Remus.

“It’s _not_. You know that I loved James like my own flesh-and-blood. Hell, more than that since my actual flesh-and-blood were scum. But that doesn’t change the truth that you were nicer than him. You’ve never deserved any of this.”

“Oh yes, I was _terribly_ nice,” said Remus sarcastically. “I was completely and utterly aware of how cruel some of those pranks we did were and I never lifted a finger to stop any of them. That’s not nice, that’s spineless. You and James, I think you’d just get too caught up in the excitement of it all to really stop and think about what you were doing. But I knew, and I didn’t say a damn thing. I think that’s worse, actually. It’s because of people like me that you-know-who got into power in the first place. I’m almost as bad as Peter.”

“You weren’t spineless. You were _loyal_ ,” said Sirius.

“So was Peter,” Remus pointed out. “Just to the wrong person.”

“But those were just pranks,” said Sirius. “Some of them were mean, but they were ultimately harmless. When _real_ bad stuff started happening you _did_ lift a finger. You’ve given pretty much everything you have to the Order. You’ve done more than any of us.”

“The only reason I’ve done the most is because I’m the only one who could. James wasn’t alive to do it. And you were locked up. It’s not because I’m more altruistic than you. It’s pure practicality.”

“I disagree, mate. I’m not sure I would have let Dumblebore send me off to fraternize with Greyback. There’s a line.”

Remus joined Sirius in sitting up. “I never told you about that,” he said suspiciously.

“Hermione told me,” said Sirius quickly.

“Did she now.”

“Yes.” Sirius was frustrated that _that_ happened to be the thing that Remus got suspicious about. It happened to be _true_. Hermione did tell him that first. Never mind that Sirius had then learned about it more in depth by spying….

“She told me about a lot of what had happened while I was gone. We had a lot of time together to kill, you know.”

“I suppose so.”

“So, what are your nightmares usually about?” asked Sirius to change to subject.

“Oh, just various things,” said Remus cagily.

“Nothing in particular?” Sirius pried.

“No.”

Sirius could tell that his friend was lying. But he also knew better than to keep prying. He knew from experience that pestering Remus would only cause him to lock down tighter on whatever you wanted to get out of him. It was far more effective to slowly wear him down over a long time than to come on strong all at once.

“You can always come wake me up if they’re bad,” Sirius offered instead. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m not some kid who can’t deal with it,” muttered Remus. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t think you were,” said Sirius. “I wasn’t offering because I thought you needed it. I was only offering to be nice.”

“Oh.”

“And maybe I was offering because _I_ need that,” Sirius added. “Maybe I was hoping you’d offer that back.”

“Oh,” said Remus again. “Do you?”

“Not really,” Sirius admitted. “But it would still be nice.”

“Oh,” Remus echoed again. “Okay, then. You can come wake me up if you need to, I suppose.”

“Thanks,” said Sirius.

“Don’t abuse that though,” Remus added. “No waking me up just because you want to give me graphic details about some lurid dream you’ve had about Rosmerta’s knickers and vat of broom polish.”

Sirius laughed. “You know me too well, don’t you?”

“I do,” Remus agreed. “Which is exactly why I hadn’t offered.”

“Well, I appreciate your great sacrifice in the name of friendship.”

“Yes. _Friendship_ ,” Remus mumbled, as he settled back down to try to go to sleep. And it might have been Sirius’s imagination but he sounded much wearier than he had before as he said it.

* * *

Sirius enjoyed their holiday very much, but all too soon they were back at 12 Grimmauld Place. The dark tapestries and heavy furniture felt extra depressing in contrast to the turquoise water and endless sunshine they’d left behind.

He didn’t mean to get sulkier again, but it was hard not to. Remus hadn’t been magically cured by the tropical atmosphere and change of pace, nor had he been struck by the sudden inclination to spill his guts and tell Sirius all the deepest troubles that were gnawing at his soul. It’s not that Sirius had actually expected that to be the case—he knew an unrealistic goal when he saw one—but Remus hadn’t been wrong when he’d called Sirius an overconfident optimist. It was hard for him not to be disappointed in spite of himself.

For three days it really _had_ felt like they’d gone back in time though. Having Remus all to himself without any obligations or missions had felt like being back in school. The very best parts of school, the kind of experience he’d missed the most in the long years since. He selfishly wanted more of that. He’d wanted to stay on their trip for weeks, not days. He wanted to go on more of them. He wanted to really make up for all the years they’d lost out on, to prove that the Marauders still existed and wasn’t just a memory of a broken past he couldn’t connect with anymore.

And while Remus _hadn’t_ spontaneously reverted to his less careworn schoolboy self, there had been faint glimpses that it still existed somewhere. It was enough to give Sirius hope that maybe he really could have some of that old lifestyle back. Maybe. If he was really, really lucky.

…If the damn Order and the war didn’t keep getting in the way and mucking everything up.

Alas, it seemed like he was unlikely to get that wish. They’d barely been back for an hour when a notice of another meeting arrived.

* * *

Remus shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He’d never particularly enjoyed Order of the Phoenix meetings, but lately they’d gotten infinitely more unpleasant. Ever since that one particular meeting (he tended to think of it as ‘the chocolate biscuit incident’ in his mind,) some sort of silent feud had broken out between his colleagues.

It was weird, really. If Remus didn’t know better, he’d think they were fighting over him.

But why would they be fighting over him? It made no sense. There had to be some other reason for the constant stream of micro-aggressions that had suddenly broken out between Sirius and Nymphadora. Maybe it stemmed back to something from their childhood (well, Dora’s childhood, Sirius would have been much older then,) that he didn’t know about. The only positive thing to come out of this was that it seemed to have bolstered Dora into getting some of her spunk back. Even if the reason was only to intimidate her cousin, it was nice to see her looking colorful again instead of so downtrodden and mousey.

At least Molly obviously wasn’t fighting over him.

No, she was pointedly fighting over Nymphadora, and clearly resenting the fact that something Remus or Sirius had done had clearly triggered this…whatever it was. Molly apparently still had not abandoned her designs on roping Dora into the Weasley family and didn’t care for the way the Dora/Sirius feud was interfering with her plans.

(Never mind the fact that anyone who wasn’t blind could clearly see that Bill was smitten with Fleur and no amount of motherly coercing was ever going to break them up, regardless of how engaging Dora was. Nor that Dora didn’t seem the least bit interested in Bill either.)

She also apparently was holding a grudge about him lying about how much he liked her biscuits.

“We have reports,” Kingsley was saying from the head of the table, “that there may be some Death Eater activity in Camden this weekend. Allegedly there is a plot to release a number of cursed artifacts into Muggle antique dealerships, with a particular emphasis on targeting tourists in hope that they will spread beyond British borders, maximizing their corrupting influence. We will need a team to stake out the markets and watch for suspicious transactions.”

“I’ll do it,” Mundungus immediately volunteered. “That’s my specialty.”

“Excellent,” said Kingsley. “We’ll need at least two or three more. It’s a complex district. Who else?”

Remus slowly held up his hand. “I’m pretty good at spotting dark artifacts.”

He hadn’t even put his hand down before Sirius and Nymphadora both simultaneously announced, “I’ll go.”

They both instantly glared at each other.

“Very good.” Kingsley jotted down some notes. “Mundungus, why don’t you take the Camden Lock Market. Tonks can cover the main streets. Remus, you take the Stables—”

“The Stables are huge, I think you’ll need more than one person to cover that,” Sirius interrupted. “I’ll go with Remus.”

Kingsley frowned. “But I still need someone to scout out the Canal Market,” he objected.

“I’ll do it,” said Arthur. He had that gleam in his eye that he only got when presented with the opportunity to wallow in Muggle technology.

“No buying anything,” reprimanded Molly.

“I won’t,” promised Arthur.

“Five galleons says he will,” whispered Sirius in Remus’s ear.

“No deal,” whispered Remus back. “That’s a bet I’d lose.”

Molly glowered at him. Remus couldn’t tell if it was because she heard them or if it was just lingering biscuit animosity.

“So we have a plan. Please arrive at your positions by ten o’clock on Sunday, in Muggle garb. Try not to be conspicuous.”

“Muggle garb is _my_ specialty,” announced Sirius gleefully. “This’ll be fun.”

“ _Not_ conspicuous,” repeated Kingsley with a pointed look at Sirius. Apparently Remus wasn’t the only one who had an idea of what type of Muggle garb Sirius favored.

“Got it,” grumbled Sirius. “Nothing flashy. Sheesh.”

“Perhaps we could go shopping for Muggle clothes together Remus,” suggested Nymphadora with forced cheerfulness.

“He can borrow my clothes!” said Sirius before Remus got a chance to reply. “I have loads.”

“Maybe you should let _him_ decide if he wants to!” said Nymphadora, a little less amicably.

“Actually,” said Remus uncomfortably, “I already have what I need. I used to have Muggle relatives.”

Sirius and Nymphadora scowled at each other.

Remus suspected it was going to be a very long weekend.

* * *

Apparently Sirius Black’s idea of ‘inconspicuous’ consisted of yellow plaid trousers, motorbike boots, a ratty _Devo_ t-shirt, and a leather jacket that appeared to contain more safety pins than actual leather. Remus would have rolled his eyes, but considering that Mundungus had shown up in a Hawaiian shirt and Jodhpurs, he felt like he didn’t have too much room to complain.

(Remus made an effort to not acknowledge the fact that Sirius actually looked rather hot and quite endearing in his get up, and it gave him some particularly interesting memories of The Good Old Days to see him like that. It was just that he’d missed the mark on their ‘inconspicuous’ orders.)

“It isn’t still 1981,” he couldn’t help saying.

“Of course not,” agreed Sirius. “Your point?”

Remus let his eyes pointedly fall on Sirius’s outfit.

“This stuff is _timeless_ , mate,” retorted Sirius. “You clearly don’t understand fashion.”

“Clearly,” he said dryly.

“You’re just bitter that you’re stuck wearing a polo shirt,” said Sirius.

“Poor me,” agreed Remus.

“I think you look very sharp, Rem,” said Nymphadora. She’d just arrived and looked very well put together in a fuchsia pinafore dress and grey cardigan. Her hair was inconspicuously brown, but it was a rich chestnut shade, not the lank mousey brown she’d been stuck with for the past several months. She looked quite pretty.

“Thanks, Dora,” he said with a smile. “You look nice too.”

“Well I think we should get going now,” said Sirius loudly, grabbing his arm. “We don’t want to miss any early illegal evil business whatnot.”

“Perhaps we could meet up for lunch later,” suggested Dora with a strained smile. “There’s a nice Indian place around the corner.”

“It would be irresponsible for us to leave our posts!” objected Sirius. “We should just grab something from a food cart in the market.”

“Why don’t we play things by ear,” said Remus attempting to placate both of them. “It’ll depend on how quickly we find the artifacts.”

“Good thinking, Rem,” said Dora with a sigh. “Be careful, okay?”

“He has _me_ to look out for him,” said Sirius, tugging him towards the Stable Market entrance.

He could just catch Dora muttering, “Not reassuring,” before he got pulled out of hearing range.

“So it’s _Rem_ now, is it?” Sirius’s voice was put out.

Remus just shrugged. It’s not like he’d told her to start calling him that.

“She dressed up for you,” added Sirius sulkily.

“She dressed up for the mission.”

“That was a more expensive dress than she usually wears for this kind of stuff,” observed Sirius.

Remus hadn’t noticed. He had never spent any time in stores that were elite enough for someone like Sirius to deem ‘expensive’ so he honestly had no idea how to distinguish high-end clothes from more usual goods. It all looked the same to him.

What he did notice, however, was that Sirius had never partnered with Nymphadora on a stakeout before. How would _he_ know how she usually dressed in these situations?

His eyes narrowed as yet another incongruity fell in line behind a long train of suspicious comments Sirius had been making.

“You’ve never seen what Dora wears on missions,” he said carefully.

“Sure I have,” retorted Sirius.

“You’ve never partnered with her,” said Remus. “There’s no way you could know how she dresses for this.”

“I…I’ve seen her around,” Sirius stammered. “And I’m sure you’ve mentioned…”

“I haven’t,” said Remus. “I’ve definitely never mentioned her clothes to you. You keep saying odd things like that. You make comments about things you shouldn’t know. You’re hiding something.”

“No, I’m….” the panic on Sirius’s face told Remus pretty much everything.

“You _are_ hiding something.”

“I….” Sirius waved his arms about in a way that would have been funny if Remus didn’t have an impending sense of dread that he wasn’t going to like what Sirius was trying to tell him.

“Look, I was just really worried about you, okay?” said Sirius in lieu of an explanation. “Everything I did was just because I was _concerned_.”

“What…did…you… _do_?”

“I was just sort of, you know, keeping an eye on you. While I was in hiding. I just wanted to know you were alright.”

“You were _spying_ on me?” asked Remus incredulously.

“You make it sound so negative,” said Sirius.

“You were _spying_ on me.” Remus was too horrified to do anything but repeat the obvious.

“Concerned observer, more like,” said Sirius defensively.

“What the bloody hell!” Remus felt like the temperature had suddenly gone up several degrees. He felt hot and uncomfortable and a little bit dizzy.

If Sirius had been watching him while he thought that Sirius was dead…then he’d seen him at his absolute most pathetic. He’d witnessed Remus languishing and pining over him. Maybe he’d even heard Remus talking about him aloud. Had he said anything embarrassing? Oh Merlin, he probably had. Sirius probably _knew_.

Sirius probably knew _everything_.

Is that why he was suddenly paying so much attention to him? Is that why he’d been bending over backwards to be attentive and thoughtful? Had Sirius seen through him, and now felt sorry for him?

Is that why Sirius was being so hostile about Dora?

Everything suddenly made so much sense. If Sirius knew that Remus was stupidly in love with him, then it would be an easy deduction to make that all his niceties towards Dora amounted to little more than leading her on. And as Dora was one of the only relatives that Sirius remained on good terms with, it stood to reason that he’d be rather overprotective of her. It was probably driving him _batty_ to watch his poor cousin get jerked around by a supposed ‘friend.’

Sirius was probably simultaneously pissed off at him and pitying him. Remus couldn’t think of a more painfully mortifying combination.

_Shite, crap, bollocks!_

This was bad. So bad. So very very bad.

“Please don’t be mad,” pleaded Sirius. “I was just—”

Remus put out his hand to cut Sirius off.

“I can’t—” began Remus. “I mean I don’t—I—I need to think.”

“Moony,” said Sirius desperately. “I didn’t mean—”

“We should split up,” said Remus, trying not to look at Sirius’s face. “You said this place is huge. We’ll be more likely to see something if we canvass it separately. I’ll—I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“But Moony—”

Remus didn’t give him a chance to finish. He bolted down one of the maze-like tunnels of stalls. He very nearly ran smack into a giant bronze horse statue and didn’t even notice. How was he supposed to notice anything when the reality he thought he knew was yet again breaking apart? How was he supposed to focus enough to find dark artifacts _now_?

Everything was _ruined_.

* * *

Sirius would have chased after Remus, but his entire body seemed to have disconnected from his brain and wasn’t currently taking orders.

He watched helplessly as one of the only important people left in his pitiful excuse for a life vanished into a crowd of tourists.

Was Remus even going to come back?

He’d bollocksed everything up _big time_. But how bad was bad? Was this something Remus could get over? Or had he just driven a permanent rift between them?

 _Shite_.

Sirius felt unsteady on his feet. He stumbled over and sat down at a nearby bistro table.

Why did he always screw everything up?

It was his fault James had trusted Peter and everything had gone to hell as a result. It was his fault he hadn’t been around so Harry had had to grow up with a neglectful family and Remus had had to stumble through years of hardship alone. It was allegedly his fault he’d gotten blasted through the veil and died. And even though that had upset everyone, he couldn’t even redeem himself by coming back. Apparently all he could achieve by living was just hurting the people he cared about even more.

But how could he have done anything differently? How could he have gotten through all that time and _not_ checked on Harry and Remus? How could he have seen them hurting so much and then ignored them? It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t allowed to let them know he was there!

A stabbing ache ripped through his chest with an intensity he hadn’t felt since that terrible Halloween night fifteen years ago. He leaned over the sticky table and dropped his head in his hands.

 _Shite_.

Why had Hermione even bothered to bring him back, anyway? He was a disaster. He should have listened to her.

Oh.

Wait.

 _Hermione_.

Hermione would know what to do. If his problems stemmed from the fact that he hadn’t listened to her…then it stood to reason that listening to her now might be the way to fix this.

He needed to talk to her!

But how? He was in Muggle territory. There wasn’t any owl post or floo network available. He frowned and looked around. The booths around him were swarming with people. There wasn’t any way for him to do magic without being noticed. He wandered around until he found a sign for the loo, and slipped inside one the stalls. He climbed up on top of a toilet so that there was no chance anyone might see his feet disappearing and apparated to the Leaky Cauldron. From there, flooing Hogwarts was easy.

“Sirius!”

The look of happiness on Harry’s face as recognition dawned was enough to lift Sirius’s spirits a little. He suddenly felt bad though that he was calling on them for selfish reasons and not a social visit for his godson. He’d have to remedy that soon.

“Hey Harry!” said Sirius with fake brightness. “How have you been doing?”

“Okay, I guess,” said Harry with a shrug. “Under a lot of stress lately.”

“I bet,” said Sirius with a nod. “Say, Harry, Hermione doesn’t happen to be around, does she?”

“You came to see Hermione?” asked Harry in surprise.

“I just have a quick question for her. I thought I’d come for a proper visit in a few days though. How’d you like to skive off classes for a day and go to Hogsmeade with me?”

Harry broke into a grin. “That would be _brilliant_ ,” he said happily. “But don’t mention it to Hermione. We’d both get an earful.”

“My lips are sealed. I have entirely different and less fun things to discuss with her. Would you mind getting her for me?”

“Sure.” Harry hopped up and disappeared for a while. Sirius shifted about in the fireplace, hoping no one else would come along.

When they returned, Hermione looked as surprised as Harry to have Sirius calling on her individually.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Could I um, have a word alone?” Sirius asked awkwardly. “I need to speak to just Hermione.”

Harry looked a bit disappointed but he nodded and disappeared up the steps to the boys’ dormitory.

“What’s going on?” asked Hermione.

“I need advice,” admitted Sirius.

“Since when do you listen to advice?’ commented Hermione.

“Har har,” muttered Sirius. “This is serious. I really screwed everything up. Remus found out that I’d been watching him and he completely freaked out.”

“That’s a reasonable reaction,” said Hermione. “What you did was very invasive. I told you it was a bad idea.”

“I know!” lamented Sirius. “I _know_ it was a bad idea! But it’s too late to change what I did, innit? What should I do _now_?”

Hermione looked thoughtful. “Well…I’m sure he feels like his privacy has been damaged. So I think the best thing you could do is give him some space. You need to let him reestablish his boundaries.”

Sirius frowned. “But he has steeper boundaries than anyone I’ve ever met. I’ve _never_ respected his boundaries. If I did we’d never have even been friends in the first place!”

“Well its probably time you started, if you want to repair his trust,” said Hermione. “At least for a little while.”

“He’s probably going to avoid me,” said Sirius. “He might even move out! Hermione, I think it might kill me if he moves out. I can’t face being in that horrible old house by myself. I’ll lose my mind. I need to explain to him why I did what I did! But how can I if he avoids me and I let him?”

“Maybe you should write him a letter,” suggested Hermione with a sympathetic look. “Then you can explain yourself without him feeling infringed upon.”

“What if he doesn’t read it?” worried Sirius. “I have a feeling he might not read it.”

“Then wait a while and write him another one,” said Hermione. “But not too much at once. I really feel you need to give him some space. Professor Lupin is a very private person and you’re more likely to drive him away if you come on too strong.”

Sirius sighed deeply. “Blast it all, I think you’re right.” He rested his head against an andiron and closed his eyes. “I hate your answer but you’re probably spot on. Damn it all.”

“For what it’s worth, I think he’ll forgive you,” said Hermione kindly. “If you give him a chance and don’t stress him out more.”

“I don’t know,” muttered Sirius miserably. “I’ve already used up a lot of second chances with him already. A bloke’s patience has to run out sometime.”

“Well, hopefully it won’t be today,” said Hermione. “Good luck, Sirius.”

* * *

Sirius reluctantly returned to the Camden Stables Market but his mission was the very last thing on his mind. He wanted this terrible day to hurry up and be over with so he could see Remus again and assess just how mad he was. He wanted to get a start on writing him an apology.

He scanned the myriad of eclectic shops and stalls as he wandered, lost in thoughts of Remus. There were a lot of interesting things for sale in the market. A lot of it was stuff he thought Remus would like.

A stand selling some homemade tablet caught his eye and he stopped and bought a packet for Remus. A few seconds later he noticed a book seller and stopped again, poking through dusty old volumes that he was absolutely sure that Remus would have found interesting. He stopped himself from purchasing one though.

 _You can’t buy him off with gifts_ , he reprimanded himself. _Stick to Hermione’s advice._

The next stall to catch his eye though fit in very well with Hermione’s advice. He found himself standing in front of a stationer’s booth. The rows of fine stationery and fancy pens were perfect for what he needed to do.

 _If I’m going to write Remus an apology_ , Sirius thought, _I might as well put it on classy stationery. Remus appreciates that kind of thing_.

He picked up some decorative paper and grinned. It had been imported from Florence or some other esteemed place like that and had swirling medieval designs along the edges. “Perfect,” he said to himself. “He’ll love this.”

Next to it a beautiful cut-crystal inkwell filled with gold toned ink caught his eye. “Never seen anything that fine in a Muggle shop before,” he mused. He reached out to get a better look.

And then he couldn’t see anything at all.


	5. A revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius gives Harry some questionable advice and has a personal revelation.

Sirius woke up in a clinical room with white walls and too-bright lighting. Harry was slumped in a chair next to his bed.

He tried to sit up, only to discover that every. Single. Part. Of. His. Body. Hurt.

“Uuuuuuugh,” he moaned and fell back against the overly starched pillow.

“Sirius?” Harry jerked to attention and was leaning over him, face tight with tension.

“Uuuggh,” he said in response. What he’d actually meant to say was ‘what happened’ but apparently his brain and mouth hadn’t decided to start cooperating yet.

“You’re in St. Mungo’s,” said Harry, apparently able to understand exactly what ‘uuuggh’ meant, brilliant kid that he was.

Remus’s face soon joined Harry’s, although Sirius had not been aware of him being in the room. He looked pinched and tired.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You found the cursed artifact.”

Sirius tried to smile and give a thumbs up but his arm hurt too much to make that much effort.

“Uuggh,” he said instead.

“I’ll go get Dumbledore,” said Remus.

* * *

After some additional anti-curse spell work by Dumbledore, Sirius was actually able to sit up and form full sentences again.

Remus hadn’t been able to stop himself from worriedly hovering, but as soon as it was clear that Sirius had not suffered any permanent damage he forced himself to step back and retreat to the periphery of the room.

His distance was partly because he was still conflicted over what Sirius had told him, and partly because he didn’t trust himself not to completely freak out and give whatever feelings Sirius wasn’t already privy to away.

When he’d heard the commotion in the market of people shouting that someone had been hurt, he had _not_ expected to find Sirius at the center of the crowd.

Sirius had been flat on his back and as still and pale as if he’d been carved from marble. His breathing was so faint that until Remus managed to get close enough to feel it, he’d thought that Sirius was dead.

_NO_ , screamed every cell in Remus’s body. _No. I cannot do this again. I. Cannot._

_This. Is. Not. Happening._

Several people were harshly shoved out of the way as Remus careened into the center of the crowd. Several more gasped in astonishment as Remus pulled his wand out and threw up an emergency flare for the others to come find them. (Kingsley was not pleased with how many Muggles needed their memories adjusted, but Remus couldn’t be bothered to care.)

Remus’s hands were shaking so bad he had trouble directing the anti-curse spells he knew at Sirius. While he waited for help to arrive he managed to get Sirius’s breathing stronger, but he couldn’t get him to wake up.

What if Sirius _never_ woke up?

A girl at Hogwarts had touched a cursed necklace a few months ago, and she had not recovered yet, had she? What if Sirius ended up like her? What if he was worse?

What if they never went back to 12 Grimmauld Place together? What if they never sat up all night talking again? Or sharing a drink after a meeting? Or took another spontaneous trip? Or just sat in companionable silence again? Was he never again going to get to see Sirius’s eyes crinkle up as he laughed about some stupid joke that no one but him or James would have found funny? (Jokes that Remus liked to pretend were too stupid to laugh at, but actually he found funny too.)

Never was the worst word in the English language.

Would he have been able to stop this from happening if he hadn’t left Sirius alone? Was this _his_ fault for running away?

Remus’s eyes were burning but he forced himself to stay calm until they got Sirius to St. Mungo’s.

Then he forced himself to stay calm while he fetched Harry.

And then he had no choice but to continue to stay calm because _Harry_ was there, and he was the adult, wasn’t he? He had to be the adult and be calm for Harry.

He felt like he was suffocating in his artificial calmness. It was filling up his throat and clogging his nose and pushing against the backs of his eyeballs. He was gagging on composure; he was so calm he’d surely soon lose his ability to do anything so disruptive as _breathe_.

He had no option but to hang back as Sirius finally came back to himself, because he knew that if he so much as made eye contact with Sirius all those layers and layers and layers of calm were going to crack apart and he’d make a scene.

And that would be…really inconvenient.

Downright mortifying.

Definitely counterproductive to his goal of not letting Sirius know how badly he affected him. Even more counterproductive to his attempts to convince _himself_ that he was perfectly functional without Sirius, thank you very much. Because good Merlin, he _had_ to be. Because this wasn’t going to be the last time something like this happened. Sirius Black was reckless and he was never going to change. Loving Sirius was on par with loving a time bomb. Remus _knew_ better.

He knew better, but he couldn’t stop.

* * *

“Dammit, I didn’t get to buy my stationery!” complained Sirius loudly.

He realized after saying it, that it was probably not the first thing he should have announced after a near death experience. He probably should have asked for more details about what had happened or offered a comforting word to Harry. But he couldn’t help it. Since regaining consciousness the main thing he’d noticed was the way that the more alert he became, the farther away Remus retreated. Any hope he may have had that his accident might have bridged the gap that had suddenly sprung up between them was quickly crushed. Even though he’d almost died, Remus was still avoiding him.

He’d _really_ screwed up.

And his attempts to rectify his mistake had been yanked out of his grasp and used to smash the living daylights out of him.

He felt so stupid for not recognizing that inkwell for what it was. If he’d actually been thinking about the mission instead of Remus he would have realized it in a second. It was _such_ an idiotically amateur mistake…one that someone who’d grown up in a whole house full of dark artifacts had no excuse missing. He’d made a complete fool out of himself, worried Harry for no reason, and he hadn’t even gotten his damned stationery!

Sirius was becoming increasingly certain that the universe hated him.

“I have some parchment if you need something to write on,” offered Harry.

“It’s fine,” sighed Sirius. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. _I’m_ fine. How are you?”

“A bit shaken,” admitted Harry. “When you suggested that I skive off classes to spend a day with you this isn’t quite what I had in mind.”

“We’re still on for that!” said Sirius quickly. “How about tomorrow? Do you want to meet up tomorrow?”

“ _Tomorrow_?” asked Harry in surprise. “But you’re….”

“Going to be sleeping _all day_ tomorrow,” interjected a nurse. “You are not to leave this bed for at least the next three days.”

“Three days!” exclaimed Sirius. “That’s insane! I feel fine! I am perfectly capable of going home right now!”

He attempted to get up to demonstrate how amazingly fine he was. Sirius managed to take three steps before his knees buckled.

“Well I’m sure that will have sorted itself out by tomorrow,” he grumbled as the nurse and Harry dragged him back to bed.

“I think next week would be good for our outing,” said Harry pragmatically. “I have a lot of studying to catch up on this week.”

“Oh, well, if that’s more convenient for you, sure,” said Sirius, feigning unawareness that Harry was just trying to make him feel less conscious of his condition. “Next week would be great.”

Harry broke into the first genuine smile Sirius had seen since waking up in the hospital. “I’m looking forward to it.”

* * *

Over the next few days Sirius got a lot of visitors.

Remus was not one of them.

Well, that was not exactly true. Sirius was aware that Remus was lurking about the hospital. He was fairly sure Remus had not left St. Mungo’s since they’d arrived, in fact. He saw him talking to the nurses and talking to Dumbledore and talking to the other people who had come to visit him. He was pretty much talking to everyone _except_ for Sirius.

Sirius desperately wanted him to actually come into his room and talk to _him_ , if for no other reason then so Sirius could at least yell at him to go home and get some sleep because Remus looked like he was going to keel over from exhaustion any minute.

He suddenly found himself with more than enough time on his hands to write his letter to Remus, but his confidence that it would help was fading.

If Remus wouldn’t talk to him in person, why would he bother reading a stupid letter? Why would he take anything Sirius wrote seriously? Especially when written on this hideous _St._ _Mungo’s_ stationery.

Sirius scowled at the blank expanse of hospital branded parchment in front of him.

Okay, he could do this.

Dear ~~Moony~~ ~~Remus~~ ~~Maybe I should call you Mr. Lupin since you’re acting like a stranger~~ Moony,

~~Look I haven’t even gotten past your name and this letter is already a disaster, remind me to rewrite it before I give it to you.~~

~~Also, just pretend this is on really nice stationery, okay? This was supposed to be on swanky stationery that would impress the pants off you.~~

~~I feel terrible.~~

~~I’m a shite friend.~~

I’m sorry. I should have ~~listened to Hermione and~~ not interfered. I only meant to check on you and Harry once. Eight and a half months was too long to go without seeing you, you know? I didn’t mean to pry. ~~It was hard to see you like that. Were you really that bad off because of _me_?~~ Don’t worry ~~I didn’t see you doing anything embarrassing like picking your nose or wanking in the shower. Shite, now you’re going to think I was trying to. I swear I was not trying to catch you wanking in the shower. I didn’t even go near the bathroom~~ I didn’t see anything bad. It tore me up to not be able to tell you and Harry I was there. I just wanted to talk to you. ~~But I sure bollocksed that up didn’t I? Because I’m right back to not being able to talk to you. I deserve it I guess.~~ I miss you. ~~Please forgive me~~.

~~This is the most pathetic letter I’ve ever written. I’m definitely not going to give it to you.~~

~~Sincerely,~~

~~Salutations,~~

~~Love,~~

~~Mischief not managed,~~

~~I can’t even think of another sign off, what do people even end their letters with these days anyway?~~

—Padfoot ~~~~

Sirius stared at his less-than-successful attempt at a peace offering to Remus and made an utterly disgusted face at the letter that had more scratched out letters than legible ones. He balled it up and tossed it at the wastebasket.

The fact that his aim was terrible and it merely bounced off the basket’s rim was something that he decided he would definitely blame on his curse-illness and not on the possibility of having poor hand-eye-coordination.

* * *

Sirius was only released from St. Mungo’s under copious instructions to not over-exert himself and to indulge in lots of rest.

(He had no intention of following any of them.)

Remus actually showed up to escort him back to 12 Grimmauld Place. Sirius was tempted to make some jokes about how he expected his friend to be a good nursemaid and take care of him. He bit his tongue and followed Hermione’s advice. He was also tempted to complain about the serious lack of visitation he’d received from Remus in the hospital. He again kept his mouth shut and followed Hermione’s advice. When they finally arrived home—when exactly had he started thinking of this awful place as ‘home’ and not just ‘his parents’ agony house’ anyway? Oh yeah, when Remus had moved in—he was tempted to comment on the fact that Remus obviously hadn’t been here since the accident. Sirius behaved himself and said nothing.

They were both doing an awful lot of saying nothing.

It was awful.

They weren’t actually giving each other the silent treatment of course. Sirius thought that might have been preferable. At least then he’d know for sure that he was being deliberately punished. He could look for some sort of endpoint, and know that things were better when Remus started talking to him again.

No, somehow the endless stream of strained meaningless niceties was a million times worse than an obvious avoidance. It felt less like a fight and more like something was broken and permanent.

Remus now only said things like:

“Would you like Earl Grey or Darjeeling?”

And,

“You shouldn’t be up so early, you’re supposed to be resting,”

And,

“I guess its Pot Noodle again, I forgot to go to the store,”

And,

“I have to write up a report for the next Order meeting, I’ll be in the study,”

And,

“By the way, Dora is staying for tea after the meeting, try not to eat all the digestives beforehand.”

_Snap_.

That last sound came from Sirius, not Remus. It was the noise of the quill he’d been holding snapping in half as Remus said the Most Irritating Thing Possible.

Sirius had given up on trying to reason to himself that his recent dislike of his once well-liked cousin was unreasonable. It was taking all of his willpower just to keep up his resolve to not bother Remus. There was only so much good behavior he could stomach. And allowing himself to indulge in being irritated with Tonks helped to temper his (probably more valid) irritation at Remus. He needed to direct all that animosity _somewhere_ and taking it out on Remus wasn’t very conducive towards solving his problem and making up with him.

In his attempts to cope he was possibly going a little bit overboard on his fantasies about using The Usurper as a punching bag.

In fact, he wasn’t really sure he could stay civil in the same room with her. Maybe he should make himself scarce.

Yeah. Making himself scarce was definitely a good idea. He owed Harry a day out, didn’t he? It was time to make good on those plans.

* * *

Ah, yes. Good ol’ Harry. Such a great kid. So like James. So obligingly willing to break the rules for a friend in need. He might not be able to count on Remus these days, but at least he could always count on _Harry_.

He hadn’t needed to twist Harry’s arm at all, he’d barely uttered the suggestion of heading off to Hogsmeade _immediately_ , and Harry had dropped his books and flashed him a grin.

“Just let me get my cloak,” he’d said, and that was that.

And now they were stomping about Hogsmeade together, in the middle of a school day, and Sirius was _almost_ enjoying himself.

Almost.

His Remus-problem was still preying at the edges of his mind, a constant aggravation weighing down everything he did. And he felt guilty that he was letting it infringe on his quality time with Harry.

“Are you doing okay?” asked Harry astutely after they’d been in a few shops and were sitting at a table waiting for Madame Rosmerta to bring them a butterbeer. “You look like something’s bothering you.”

And something suddenly clicked: maybe that was the thing. Maybe he needed to _combine_ his time with Harry with processing his Remus-problem. Hermione had always been good at giving him insight. Maybe Harry could offer him a helpful perspective as well? It was his job as godfather to offer Harry advice and guidance. But that didn’t mean that his godson might not be able to offer some in return as well. Kids these days were smart.

He’d need to find a way to phrase his situation so it didn’t sound like pathetic whining though. How could he inconspicuously weave it into conversation?

“I’m doing alright,” he said, stalling. “Now that the curse headache is all cleared up. Sorry again for worrying you. How has school been?”

Harry shrugged. “It’s a bit overwhelming trying to keep up with N.E.W.T. classes. But I think I’m doing okay. Hermione’s been helping me keep on top of the work. And Ron’s been helping with quidditch and stuff.”

Ah ha! Now that was a good opening if Sirius ever saw one! Time to work his magic at manipulating conversations!

“That’s great Harry,” said Sirius with a sincere smile. “They seem like really great mates to you.”

“Oh, they are!” agreed Harry enthusiastically. “I don’t think I could have found better. I’m really lucky I met them.”

“Indeed you are,” said Sirius, trying very hard to keep his tone light and conversational, “And…I couldn’t help noticing, that it seems likely that Ron and Hermione have a thing for each other.”

“I’d say that’s more than likely,” agreed Harry with a snort. “I’m pretty sure that everyone has noticed except for them.”

“Oh, I’d bet that Hermione has noticed,” said Sirius. “That’s how _I_ noticed. It was hard not to pick up on after listening to the way she talked about you two for months.”

“Poor you.” Harry gave Sirius a pained smile. “I can barely stand to listen to them being idiots about each other for a few minutes at a time. They’re getting intolerable.”

“So it bothers you?” asked Sirius, hoping that it wasn’t too obvious that that was his entire point of bringing this up.

Harry shrugged. “A little, I guess. I mean, it’s hard not to be bothered when both of your best mates start acting differently all of the time. I hate feeling left out.”

“Do you ever find yourself just really wanting to punch Hermione in the face?”

Harry’s eyes widened in surprise. “What? _No_. Definitely not. Why on earth would I want to do that?”

“Jealousy?” prompted Sirius, wondering if he had perhaps been a bit less smooth than he’d thought at leading the conversation in that direction.

“Uh,” said Harry, his brow scrunching up in confusion. “If I was jealous of them dating, shouldn’t it be _Ron_ I should want to punch in the face? You know, for stealing Hermione?”

“I don’t know,” said Sirius vaguely. “What do you think?”

“I don’t have those sorts of feelings for Hermione,” explained Harry. “She feels more like a sister than a girlfriend. But I know that Ron does feel that way. And I’d really like to be happy for them, because if they could just stop being so stupid about their feelings I know they’d be really great together. But it’s hard, you know? Because they’re both my best mates. And I know that Ron isn’t ignoring me while he’s dating Lavender, because, well, he only sees her as a girl. But if he and Hermione get together they’ll probably start spending all their time together, because they’re best mates too, and really, what could be better than falling in love with your best mate? So I’m afraid I’ll get left out if that happens. I just don’t want to end up as a third wheel, that’s all.”

“So you’re worried. But not jealous,” Sirius clarified.

“Well I’m a bit jealous of what they might have,” Harry admitted. “But I’m not jealous of them. If that makes sense.”

Sirius nodded. What Harry had said was very sensible. And did not help him one iota in confirming that his sudden violent urges towards Tonks were reasonable.

“I’ll tell you though,” Harry suddenly lowered his voice and leaned closer to his godfather. “There _is_ someone I’ve been wanting to punch rather badly lately.”

“Oh?” In spite of his worsening inner turmoil, Sirius cheered up at the prospect that Harry wanted to confide in him.

Harry looked about, as if checking for the possibility of extendable ears.

“You can’t say a _word_ to Ron,” he whispered.

Sirius slapped a hand to his chest. “Cross my heart,” he said sincerely.

“Dean Thomas,” said Harry solemnly. “I hate that I feel this way, because he’s my friend and all, but I would _love_ to deck him in the face.”

“Any particular reason?”

“He’s dating Ginny,” said Harry glumly.

“Ginny Weasley?” asked Sirius, already knowing the answer.

Harry nodded. “Don’t tell Ron!”

“I won’t. But why don’t you want Ron to know? I don’t see how he could disapprove. You’re ten times the man anyone else at that school is. He should be chuffed.”

“He’s very overprotective.”

“Well, he seems to be handling it okay with this Dean fellow,” said Sirius thoughtfully.

“Not really,” sighed Harry. “He’s not happy about it at all. He doesn’t think she should be dating anyone. He can’t really do anything about her seeing Dean, but I know he’d see it as a betrayal if it were me.”

“Well that’s ridiculous. She’s nearly as old as you are, isn’t she? And she seems like a smart girl. She’s perfectly capable of dating whomever she wants.”

“ _I_ know that,” said Harry. “But it doesn’t help make Ron see sense. I don’t want to lose him as my best mate.”

“Well,” said Sirius. “I certainly subscribe to the belief that you should respect your mates before messing with birds. But on the other hand, if he’s really as good of a mate as he seems to be, I think he’ll be reasonable. Or at least come around.”

“That’s the thing though,” said Harry. “She’s not just a bird. She’s my friend _too_.”

“Sounds ideal. Have you talked to her about this?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, maybe that would be a good place to start, yeah?”

“I know,” agreed Harry reluctantly. “I keep meaning to. But every time I try it’s like my brain turns to taffy and I’m incapable of saying anything intelligent. And I just kind of stand there like a complete idiot and end up saying something moronic about what’s new at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes or something…and what’s the point, anyway? She’s dating _Dean Thomas_.”

“The point is that you’re both still in school so there’s a very good chance that she won’t be dating that bloke forever. So maybe it would do you some good to lay the groundwork. So she’ll know to consider you in her options.”

“Yeah,” said Harry. “Yeah, that makes sense. It’s just….” He paused and frowned, worrying at a bit of frayed fabric on his sleeve.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, it’s just…what with all the dark stuff happening…and Lord Voldemort targeting me and all…I can’t help thinking I’d be bad for her. So she’s probably better off with Dean anyway. No matter how much I hate that.”

_That sounds like something Moony would say_.

“You,” said Sirius very seriously, “are far more noble and responsible than any boy your age has any business being.”

“Not really.” Harry shrugged. “I still want to punch Dean’s lights out.”

“Well, maybe you should.” Sirius winked at him.

“ _Sirius_.” Harry lightly shoved his godfather.

Sirius grinned. “Sorry, Harry. I’m probably not the most upstanding adult you know. You’ve already used up my day’s quota of quality parental advice. I _was_ a Marauder, you know.”

“So was my dad,” said Harry.

“I rather expect he’d have had no problem with you punching Dean either. Not if true love was on the line, anyway.”

“No.” Harry’s demeanor darkened slightly, catching Sirius off-guard. He was used to Harry being enraptured at any mention of James. “I don’t reckon he would have.”

“Well,” said Sirius, trying to recover. “I’m sure you’ll prove the better man than either of us. I know you’ll work things out.”

“Yeah.” Harry gave Sirius another pained smile. “You’re probably right. Thanks for letting me talk to you about it. It’s been bothering me for a while.”

“I’m happy to talk to you about anything, any time at all, Harry. I’m glad you want to talk to me.”

“I’m glad you’re _here_ so I can,” replied Harry meaningfully. “There were a lot times that I wanted to. But I couldn’t…because you were….” Harry shrugged and looked down at the floor.

“Yeah.” Sirius almost added ‘I know,’ but stopped himself because that would have invited some inconvenient questions. Instead he tacked on, “Me too.”

* * *

After Harry headed back to Hogwarts, Sirius spent a lot of time mulling over their conversation.

_If I was jealous of them dating, shouldn’t it be Ron I should want to punch in the face? You know, for stealing Hermione?_ He’d said.

By Harry’s logic, it should be _Remus_ that Sirius was feeling tetchy towards, not Tonks. He ought to be resentful that Remus was pursuing Tonks.

It wasn’t quite the same though, was it? He’d always liked Tonks, but she wasn’t one of his best mates. He only had one now. Remus had always been _a_ best mate, but he’d been solidly elevated to the primary status of _the_ best mate, once James was removed from the equation.

That was the irrefutable truth. Remus was his best mate.

And he definitely wasn’t interested in dating Tonks. Just the very idea was super weird. She was his cousin once removed, or however that worked. Not that details like that usually bothered most people with a pureblood mentality, like his parents, but he certainly didn’t align to that train of thinking. Eugh.

No, he didn’t care about anyone stealing Tonks. He wasn’t interested. He didn’t feel resentful towards Remus for pursuing her, if that’s what he was doing.

No. His feelings of deep resentment definitely stemmed from the idea of someone stealing _Remus_.

He thought it was fairly normal to be unhappy at the idea of one’s best mate getting hijacked.

But his godson’s perspective didn’t quite line up. Harry only seemed able to relate when there were romantic attachments involved.

_What could be better than falling in love with your best mate?_

His casual statement kept bouncing around inside Sirius’s head, long past his trip back to 12 Gimmauld Place. Long past the time he should have fallen asleep.

It felt…significant.

* * *

Sirius withdrew from other people’s company—of course the only other person consistently around was Remus, but that wasn’t Sirius’s fault, he was definitely _not_ avoiding Remus specifically, it only appeared that way due to the lack of other people around to avoid—spending the next several days in a pensive fugue.

(Anyway, it’s not like Remus would even notice, considering he was low key avoiding Sirius himself.)

He couldn’t let go of the things Harry had said to him.

Was he jealous of Tonks?

Was he jealous of Tonks, not because his best mate was going to have less time for him, but because he _fancied_ his best mate?

The very idea seemed ridiculous.

Really, this was the kind of stuff that made the punch line of Marauder jokes—so insane that he wouldn’t even think of the idea without several shots of firewhisky in his system. So improbable that he wouldn’t even dare to tell the joke unless all his friends were similarly sloshed and already laughing their arses off. It was totally preposterous.

Except.

Why did his mind keep circling back to that (totally ridiculous) possibility?

Why was it so much easier to dismiss the notion of possibly fancying Tonks?

Why had he found himself nodding empathetically when Harry confessed to wanting to punch Dean Thomas because he was getting in the way of Harry’s time with Ginny?

Not Ron. _Ginny_.

Sirius’s feelings about Remus weren’t like Harry’s feelings for Ron, like Sirius had been assuming. They were actually a bit more in line with the way Harry was feeling about a _girl_.

_Which probably doesn’t mean anything at all_ , he tried to reassure himself.

Except.

Well. It was something to think about.

_Something_ stupid _to think about_ , he scolded himself. _You’re just psyching yourself up over nothing_.

(It didn’t feel like nothing.)

After the fourth day of simply trying to bury the idea under a stream of, ‘no, impossible, don’t be ridiculous, this is _Moony_ I’m thinking about. MOONY. How could I even go there,’ he decided to switch tactics and prove that the idea was stupid by actually indulging in it.

He tried to imagine him and Moony on a date. Yeah, going someplace date-y, like Madam Puddifoot’s. He imagined them sharing some frivolous dessert like one of those tiny little fruit tarts, covered with glazed kiwi slices (why would anyone ever choose to order something like that when they could have instead ordered something made with twelve different types of whipped cream and drenched in flaming alcohol? People definitely lost their sanity while dating.) The imagined tableau was utterly absurd. Even in his imaginary date Moony was trying not to crack up while he ate his fruit tart, due to the preposterousness of it all.

Of course, his idea of what constituted ‘dating’ was a little bit behind the times, considering that he hadn’t engaged in it since he’d still been at school. (Not his fault, it was sort of hard to be part of the dating scene while you’re stuck in prison or on the lam.) And even back then…well, saying that he’d been ‘dating’ was a bit of a stretch. More like he went on isolated dates…mostly with girls he’d found out fancied him, so he’d agreed to take them out for kicks (and also to make James and Peter jealous because it was hilarious how envious they were of his popularity amongst Hogwart’s female population.) He’d definitely had a better time with the ones who hadn’t expected to drag him to places like Madam Puddifoot’s. Who was that one girl that he’d found particularly tolerable? The Ravenclaw seventh year? Venus? Valerie? No, wait, her name was Vera. Yeah, Vera Penhaligon. If he _had_ felt inclined to bother with having a girlfriend back then (which he hadn’t especially,) Vera Penhaligon probably would have been the one. She never once made him buy her stupid fruit tarts with little valentine decorations stuck in the pastry. No, she’d kid around with him about the crazy pranks he bragged about and then she’d drag him off to the bushes besides the lake and push him up against a tree and….

Ah, yeah. Those were fun times.

Sirius let his mind wander while he mused on his long lost irresponsible youth.

He might have let his mind wander a little too freely, however. Because one moment he was thinking about Vera’s lovely blonde hair, and the next minute the hair he was imagining was an awful lot shorter and browner. And apparently his body did not find the idea of Moony grinding him up against a tree nearly as preposterous or laughable as the idea of Moony sharing miniaturized deserts at a frou-frou teashop.

In fact, the complete and utter lack of his ability to find humor in the scenario rather took his breath away.

“Ruddy hell,” he gasped. “I—oh _shite_.”

Sirius knocked over his chair in his rush to take a cold shower.

* * *

So. Apparently he fancied Remus.

It was a weird thought.

And not entirely just because it was _Remus_ that Sirius fancied. Sirius wasn’t used to fancying people. In recent years he hadn’t had time for it. But even before then, it just hadn’t really been his thing. He’d thought romance was kind of stupid, honestly. What kind of role models had he had for it? He certainly didn’t want to wind up like his parents. If being in love meant just being two unpleasant people stuck in an unpleasant house while being unpleasant to their children who tied them unpleasantly together, then he’d gladly sit that experience out, thank you very much. And watching James dissolve into a blubbering idiot every time that Lily Evans had walked past his line of sight certainly hadn’t done much to bolster Sirius’s opinion of romance.

It all seemed like some sort of epic joke that the universe had comprised to make people act stupid. Sirius Black had considered himself _way_ too cool for that.

It’s not that he was _entirely_ opposed to the idea. He had enjoyed occasionally messing around with people. He liked some of the girls who gave him attention okay. He certainly enjoyed the knowledge that other people fancied him. He just…couldn’t mange to find any of his dating options as interesting as his friends.

Why on earth would he choose to spend time with uninteresting people in tacky tearooms when he could be running around with people who really _got_ him and wanted to pull off hilarious jokes and play quidditch and go exploring? There was really no contest.

That _friends_ and _dating options_ were not mutually exclusive concepts had never even occurred to him.

But now the idea hit him like a lightning bolt, shaking him to his very core.

_What could be better than falling in love with your best mate?_

Harry really was a brilliant kid. If only he’d been half that insightful at that age, his life might have turned out a whole lot differently.

So here he was. He fancied Remus. He fancied Remus in a pretty bad way if he was being completely honest with himself. He’d examined his feelings from every angle and had come to the conclusion that while this was _surprising_ , it was definitely not a bad thing. In fact, he would have found it brilliant if not for one minor problem:

There was no way in bloody hell it would ever work out.

Remus was…well, Remus was just too _Remus-y_ to ever go for it.

He could be surprisingly uptight for someone who took as much delight in pranks and adventures as the Marauders did. Life for Remus was a constant tightrope balance between _rules_ and _fun_. And Sirius had seen evidence that the rules half of the equation had definitely gained some traction over the years of growing up he’d done (Sirius blamed it on his lack of presence during that time. Remus would have fared a lot better if Sirius’s corrupting influence hadn’t been interrupted.)

That of course didn’t guarantee that Remus wouldn’t at least consider the idea. He _might_. He’d never been girl crazy like James and Peter were, so the possibility at least seemed there a little bit.

…If not for Tonks.

Yeah, Tonks was most definitely the biggest wrench in Sirius’s potential happiness.

Tonks was young and spunky and hadn’t had dementors drain all of the vitality out of her.

Tonks had charming colorful hair. What did he have to offer? Prison tats.

Tonks could shapeshift. She could literally make herself appear any way that Remus wanted. How the blazes was he supposed to compete with that?

How could _anyone_ compete with that?

Why would Remus want some washed out has-been with loads of baggage when he could instead have literally the world’s most ideal girlfriend?

His younger self might have been an extremely desirable specimen but the current version—the older, worn-out, considerably more broken model—was significantly less marketable. To think that Sirius had any chance at all was laughable.

What was the point in even trying? He’d just embarrass himself.

It wasn’t happening.

It especially wasn’t happening considering that Remus still hadn’t gotten over being all weird and distant towards him.

It was certainly being over ambitious to hope he might actually get to be with Remus romantically. Right now, he needed to settle on more realistic goals. Like simply getting his _friend_ back.

Yeah, he really needed to work on that.

* * *

It had been one week, three days, six hours, and twenty-four minutes since Sirius had spoken to him normally and not in a weird overly formal stilted way. Not that Remus was counting.

(He was.)

He’d almost think that it was deliberate avoidance, brought on because Sirius _knew_. That Sirius was uncomfortable because he’d _seen_ and figured Remus out. That he found the idea of Remus’s attachment to be upsetting and inappropriate.

Except…Remus was no longer quite so sure that that was actually the case.

For the three hundredth and eighty-seventh time, he smoothed out the now faded and creased piece of parchment that he’d tripped over in Sirius’s hospital room and stared at it.

It was…definitely the oddest letter he’d ever received (never mind that he clearly hadn’t been meant to actually receive it.)

And…some of the crossed out parts were definitely _not_ reassuring.

(Although he tried to convince himself that Sirius probably wouldn’t have joked about him wanking in showers if he’d guessed that it was _Sirius_ himself that Remus thought about in those circumstances. Or…never mind, he probably would, actually. Although he’d probably have done so in a more obnoxiously boastful sort of way, so Remus still leaned towards thinking that he hadn’t actually figured him out after all.)

And…ignoring that extremely uncomfortable tangent in the letter, the rest of it conveyed a desperate sincerity that made Remus’s chest hitch.

He ran his finger over the scratched out ‘ _Love,_ ’ and indulged in pretending that it had more meaning behind it than just the closing greeting.

_It didn’t though_ , Remus had to remind himself. _It’s just a polite tag line for his signature. His parents probably forced him to sign all his letters that way._

_(Actually, no, they probably forced him to sign his letters with something terrible like ‘Death to Mudbloods’ and Sirius had transformed that to the more conventional ‘Love’ in pure rebellion.)_

Regardless…the letter had him convinced that Sirius didn’t know as much as he’d feared, and whatever he did know wasn’t bothering him beyond feeling guilty. Not that it mattered though. Letter or not, Remus had forgiven Sirius pretty much the second he’d seen him collapsed in the market. Finding out that Sirius had been invading his privacy had been alarming. But it was a terribly _Sirius_ thing to do, and it wasn’t by a long shot the worst thing that Sirius had ever done to him. He’d known that Sirius was a meddler long before he’d fallen for him, and he could get over it in light of bigger and more important problems.

Yes, the spying he could get over.

The almost dying he could not.

He simply did not have it in him to keep going through that. It was bad enough that his physical body got ripped apart and fused back together again and again and again. He couldn’t keep putting his heart through the same kind of trauma too. It was too much. It was much, much too much.

If he really gave in to his feelings, Sirius was going to _destroy_ him.

He needed to put a stop to this. He needed to withdraw until he could figure out a way to wall off those feelings and keep them from hurting him. He needed to find a way that he could be around Sirius and act normal and have real conversations without hanging on to the possible hidden meanings of every word and trying to memorize every expression on his face. He needed to learn how to look at Sirius without his hands trembling from the need to reach out and _touch_ him just to be sure that he was still alive and not a figment of Remus’s imagination.

In one week, three days, six hours, and twenty-four minutes, Remus still had not figured any of that out. He rather suspected that a century would not be enough to figure it out. He’d loved Sirius for more than half of his entire life by now, the feelings had stubbornly endured even through the long years of thinking that Sirius was a betrayer and murderer and someone he should hate. They’d rebounded twofold once he realized that he wasn’t. How do you just put a lid on something that entrenched in your psyche? Short of obliterating his own memory, Remus didn’t think he could.

So he avoided.

And waited.

And counted.

And waited.

* * *

Ron, being the excellent best mate that he was, had happily supplied Harry with all his notes from the classes Harry had skipped. Harry was trying very hard to copy them and get caught up on what he’d missed.

He couldn’t focus though.

He kept thinking about his day out with Sirius.

He’d really enjoyed it, of course. Having Sirius back was the best thing that possibly could have happened. He’d missed his godfather _so much_. It felt amazing to have someone that felt like actual family again, who obviously cared about him in a way the Dursleys never in a million years would. Spending time with Sirius was always excellent.

But…something about Sirius had been off this time; subtly so…but still off.

He had mostly been acting like normal, but there’d been an anxious energy to him. His smiles were unnaturally broad, his movements jerkier and more frenetic.

It was the sort of thing that Harry used to not even notice. A few months ago he would have just brushed it off as generic quirkiness. But now Harry had been through enough upheavals that he was always on the lookout for _something wrong_. Because he’d learned the hard way that if something _seemed_ wrong, it probably was. And he’d already been sorry one too many times for not being in tune enough to see disaster coming.

He knew he was probably being overdramatic by worrying that Sirius seeming a bit nervous was a harbinger of _disaster_ , but he honestly hadn’t recovered enough from Sirius being _dead_ to feel complacent when it came to his godfather.

So. It was bothering him.

And apparently that was _obvious_.

“What’s wrong?” Hermione swooped in and settled across from him at his table.

“Nothing,” sighed Harry. “I’m just worrying over absolutely nothing.”

“What kind of nothing?” asked Hermione. “You don’t look like it’s ‘nothing’.”

“Has Sirius seemed kind of odd lately?” he asked.

“You mean odder than usual?” asked Hermione with a smirk. “Because I’m not sure I’d ever say he doesn’t, in all honesty.”

“I guess I’m worried that the curse is still affecting him,” confessed Harry. “He’s seemed off since that happened. He’s been acting twitchy and nervous. That’s really not like him.”

“Ah. Yes. Well. No,” said Hermione in a voice that very much intoned that she knew something she wasn’t saying (but what else was new, Hermione hoarded information that everyone else had missed like a dragon hoarding gold.) “Yes, I have noticed. And no, it’s not like him. But no, I don’t think you need to worry about the curse. I don’t think that’s still affecting him. Dumbledore was very thorough, and the healers at St. Mungo’s really know what they’re doing. I’m positive he’s fine.”

“Then why is he being so twitchy and nervous?” pressed Harry. “Since when is _Sirius_ nervous? He’s usually all enthusiastic confidence. And when he’s not it’s only because he’s moping about something. I’ve never seen him acting anxious before. It’s unsettling. What if he’s gotten into some kind of trouble and he’s not telling anyone? I don’t want to lose him again just because I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not it. I don’t think you need to worry about him.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “You _know_ what’s going on, don’t you?”

“We—ll….” Hermione shrugged and trailed off.

“You know!” said Harry with more certainty. “Hermione! What’s going on with Sirius?”

“I don’t _know_ anything for certain,” she replied. “I just have a bit of a guess. That’s all. And I’m pretty sure you don’t need to worry.”

“So what is it?” asked Harry. “What’s the deal with him?”

“It’s not my secret to tell!” said Hermione stubbornly.

“You’re not telling a secret if you don’t actually know it,” Harry needled. “Telling me a guess doesn’t count.”

“Yes it does,” sighed Hermione.

“Can’t you just give me a vague idea?” he tried. “Just give me a vague idea so I won’t worry. You don’t have to give specific details.”

“I don’t see how everyone else hasn’t noticed already,” she muttered. “He’s being really obvious.”

“Obvious about _what_?”

Hermione sighed. “He’s pining over someone, obviously. I’m sure he’s just stressed out about that situation.”

Harry was taken aback. “He’s…what? You mean he’s in love?”

The idea caught him completely by surprise. But then after thinking on it a moment it made more sense than he would have expected. Sirius _had_ been acting awfully interested in talking about potential relationships with him. At the time it hadn’t occurred to Harry that he might be talking about such things because he had a personal investment in the subject.

Hermione shrugged vaguely. “I honestly don’t know. It’s just the impression I’ve gotten.”

“With who?” asked Harry, completely ignoring the fact that he’d told Hermione she didn’t need to elaborate with details.

“That is _definitely_ not my secret to tell,” she said indignantly.

“Is it Tonks?” asked Harry immediately. “I bet its Tonks! She sort of went off the deep end when he died, didn’t she? And she’s gotten better again since he’s been back. Are they going to get together now?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s not Tonks,” said Hermione shiftily. “Definitely not.”

Harry frowned. “Who else could it be but Tonks? Has he met someone I don’t know? His social circle while he was in hiding was really small. I don’t know who he’d even have seen except for Tonks. I mean, I’m assuming he’s not in love with Ron’s mum or anything.”

Hermione snorted. “Don’t worry, he’s not. That would certainly have been…awkward.”

“So it must be someone I don’t know then,” mused Harry. “Whoever it is, I hope he introduces me to her.”

Hermione was biting her lip and looked like she was about to explode for want of telling him.

“Have _you_ met her?” asked Harry suspiciously.

Hermione shook her head. “It’s not someone you don’t know,” she admitted.

“It’s not…it’s not _Fleur_ , is it?” asked Harry in dismay.

Hermione was very quick to shake her head.

“Oh good,” said Harry. “I’m not sure I could have forgiven him for that.” He frowned again. “I can’t think of any other witches that he ever even sees. I mean, it can’t be McGonagall, right? She’s the only one left. No…wait. There’s also Madame Rosmerta! Ha! It’s her, isn’t it? He winked at her when we were at the Three Broomsticks yesterday!”

“Wait…what were you doing at the Three Broomsticks yesterday?” asked Hermione, sounding scandalized. “Yesterday was a school day!”

“I needed to see Sirius,” explained Harry defensively.

“Harry, you can’t skip classes at this point in our schooling! Do you want to fail your N.E.W.T.s?”

“I’m not going to fail just because I missed one day!” exclaimed Harry. “You’re just trying to change the topic because you don’t want to admit I’m right about Madame Rosmerta!”

“That’s stupid, because you’re utterly wrong!” huffed Hermione. “You haven’t even gotten warm!”

“How is that possible?” complained Harry. “I’ve named _everyone_. I think it’s you who must be wrong. Sirius doesn’t even spend time with anyone else except for Lupin.”

He snorted and waited for Hermione to contradict him.

Hermione didn’t say anything.

Hermione was biting her lip again and looking like she was about to rock out of her seat with suppressed information.

“You were supposed to laugh at that,” said Harry uncomfortably. “Why aren’t you laughing at that?”

“Ooooh, _Harry_ ,” gasped Hermione. “Don’t tell me you can’t see it!”

“See…what?” asked Harry cautiously.

“Look, you can’t tell him I said anything!” said Hermione anxiously.

“You _haven’t_ said anything,” pointed out Harry. “You’ve been spectacularly unhelpful, actually.”

“You named them!” said Hermione. “You named them and didn’t even take it seriously!”

Harry frowned. “What…you can’t mean…you don’t mean _Lupin_ …do you?”

Hermione’s forehead creased. “Now don’t tell me that _you_ of all people are close minded about something like that. You don’t have a problem with half-bloods or werewolves or giants, do you? Why would you have an issue with _that_?”

“I…what?” Harry was reeling a bit from the unexpectedness of this information. He still felt like he must have heard her wrong. “I don’t…its just…wait, are you _sure_? That can’t…no. It _must_ be Tonks.”

“It’s _not_ Tonks!” exclaimed Hermione in frustration. “Ask him yourself!”

“Did you?” asked Harry. “You said you were just guessing. How are you so certain?”

“Because I had to spend months locked up in hiding with him!” Hermione reminded him. “He was sulking the entire time! And it was _not_ about Tonks!”

“But…it _was_ about Lupin?” asked Harry incredulously.

Hermione nodded. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Huh,” said Harry, feeling dazed.

“Well I’m _glad_ I did tell you,” Hermione added disapprovingly. “Because hopefully now you’ll have a better reaction when _he_ tells you.”

“I’m not having a bad reaction,” said Harry. “I’m just surprised. That’s unexpected. Very, very unexpected.”

“I don’t see why,” countered Hermione. “The very first time you ever saw Sirius he practically launched himself at Professor Lupin. They were obviously very close.”

Harry considered that. “Yeah, I suppose you’ve got a point.”

“I mean, I’ve never seen you hug Ron quite like that,” she observed.

“No, I guess not,” Harry agreed. “Huh. I didn’t notice. Well…okay then. How does Lupin feel about all this?”

Hermione shrugged. “I have no idea. He doesn’t really advertise his feelings as obviously as Sirius does. And I didn’t exactly spend the better part of a year listening to him have a tantrum on the subject, did I?”

“No,” Harry conceded. “Hm. This is weird to think about.”

“It’s not weird just because they’re both men!” scolded Hermione.

“Did I say it was?” retorted Harry. “That’s not what I meant! I mean it’s weird because I still think of Lupin as our teacher! And I don’t ever really think about teachers as…you know!” he flailed a bit.

“As real people with personal lives?” prompted Hermione.

“Exactly,” said Harry. “I mean…it’s _weird_. Can you imagine Snape dating? Bleck. You’re not supposed to think about teachers like that.”

“He’s not our teacher anymore,” Hermione reminded him. “He’s Sirius’s friend. He’s _our_ friend.”

“Yeah,” agreed Harry. “I guess so.”

“I think they would be good together,” declared Hermione. “Sirius really needs to get his act together and talk to Professor Lupin. The reason he’s all twitchy is because he’s not doing anything about it. In fact I’m not even sure if he’s figured his own feelings out. And they had a bit of a falling out the other day, you know, so it makes a lot of sense that Sirius is upset.”

“They had a falling out?” asked Harry in surprise. “How do you even know so much? Sirius didn’t tell me about that!”

“I’m sure he didn’t want to talk about it because it’s upsetting him.”

“But you somehow know.”

“He just asked me for some advice,” said Hermione guiltily.

“He could have asked _me_ for advice,” Harry couldn’t help complaining. He knew it was petty but he hated the idea of Sirius confiding in other people more than him. Hermione had her _own_ family. Sirius was all Harry had!

“You don’t have to take it personally, he only came to me because there’s stuff I already knew about because of living with him for those months. It’s not because he doesn’t trust you, or think you’d give good advice. I was just the most convenient person for him to talk to about it,” said Hermione in a placating tone.

Harry scowled but tried not to dwell on it. “Well I hope that they get it sorted out. I don’t like the idea of them fighting.”

“Me either,” agreed Hermione. “I wonder…do you think we could help them fix it?”

“What…the falling out?” asked Harry. “Or…the other thing?”

“…Both?” suggested Hermione. A gleam that usually indicated ‘I’m plotting something’ crept into her eye.

* * *

“I don’t see why _I_ have to be the one pretending to have a sexual identity crisis!” whined Ron. “I’m not gay! Not even a little bit! I’m so very, very, very _not_!”

“You were perfectly willing to pretend to be Crabbe,” said Hermione calmly. “I don’t see how this is worse than _that_.”

“No one knew it was me when I was being Crabbe,” retorted Ron. “I don’t want people to get the wrong idea about _me_.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with it!” he quickly tacked on as he noticed the way Hermione’s face was scrunching up in an I’m-about-to-deliver-a-social-injustice-rant-at-you way. “I don’t have a problem with that! It’s just that _I’m_ not! I like girls! I want the girls to _know_ I like girls!”

“Believe me,” said Hermione in a very unamused voice. “The girls are perfectly aware. You and _Lavender_ have made your preferences abundantly clear.”

“But people will just think I was overcompensating or something if a rumor starts going around,” complained Ron.

“Perhaps you should set your sights on girls who are smart enough to not listen to stupid rumors then,” said Hermione icily.

“Lupin isn’t going to repeat anything you tell him in confidence,” interjected Harry. “I don’t think you need to worry about any rumors starting.”

“If you’re so sure about that, why don’t _you_ come out to him!” exclaimed Ron.

“Because that would make Professor Lupin suspicious!” retorted Hermione. “It wouldn’t make sense for Harry to go to him for advice instead of Sirius!”

“And it would for me?” asked Ron incredulously.

“Well, it has to be one of the three of us, because this is too personal for us to involve anyone else. You’re just the least suspicious of our options.”

“This is a terrible plan,” griped Ron. He gave both Hermione and Harry the evil eye. “I really, really _hate_ this plan.”

“But you’re going to do it anyway because you’re a good person and want to help people,” announced Hermione with confidence.

“Uh…” said Ron.

“I knew you’d do it,” said Hermione. She smiled and gave Ron a hug.

Ron turned redder than his Gryffindor scarf.

“I hate this plan,” he just mumbled under his breath.


	6. Confrontations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A string of very awkward social engagements.

Remus tried to focus on his book but he just kept reading the same paragraph over and over again. He couldn’t concentrate on the printed words because his attention was being obnoxiously commandeered by the barely there presence of a large dog on his toes.

The communication fissure between him and Sirius had gotten so bad that Sirius had apparently decided to deal with it by spending the majority of his time in a form that had no ability to communicate at all. Remus had mostly been grateful for this. It was easier for him to deal with Padfoot than human Sirius. He didn’t need to make awkward conversation. He didn’t have to struggle with the very frustratingly compelling urge to lean forward and kiss him when Sirius was in close range. He could almost pretend that Padfoot was just a regular dog, and so it allowed him to relax a bit in Sirius’s presence and for a while ignore the monumental tension.

The downside though, was that Padfoot was even less respectful of personal space than Sirius’s usual self, and that made a dangerous combination with the way Remus always found himself letting his guard down around the dog.

Padfoot had quietly slunk into the room about half an hour ago and pitifully thrown himself down on the floor. During that time frame he had been slowly inching closer and closer to Remus’s feet. Instead of actually reading his book Remus had just been watching the dog’s progress over the top of his page and thinking, ‘ _I really ought to move my feet out of his way._ ’ But no matter how many times he thought that he couldn’t seem to will his feet to actually move. And now the warm weight of dog was encroaching on his toes, but only just, and Remus was hyperaware of the invasion.

It was currently taking all of Remus’s willpower to remain still and not give in to the urge to shove his feet the rest of the way under Padfoot, because contact with the dog was familiar and comforting and unfortunately not at all helpful in the grand scheme of trying to get over his feelings. And he was getting rather annoyed with himself for being such a pushover. And he was trying to instead be annoyed with Sirius for being so invasive, but he just couldn’t seem to manage it since the dog looked so forlorn.

His internal struggle was interrupted by the unexpected appearance of a head in the fireplace.

“Hello Professor Lupin!” exclaimed Harry’s head.

Remus snatched his feet away from Padfoot as if the dog had burst into flames instead of the fireplace.

“Harry!” said Remus, aware that his voice was tight with nerves from the suddenness of the intrusion. “I wasn’t expecting you! I’m not a professor anymore, you know. You can just call me Remus.”

“Right, well, hello Remus,” said Harry. “This isn’t a bad time, is it?”

Remus looked down at Padfoot. “No,” he said, waiting slowly to see if Sirius might contribute an objection. (He didn’t.) “We weren’t doing anything important.”

“Excellent,” said Harry. “In that case you wouldn’t mind too much if we stopped over for a short visit, would you?”

“Er…no, I suppose not,” said Remus, shooting Padfoot another brief look. “That would be alright.”

Padfoot transformed back into Sirius as Harry climbed through the fireplace, followed by Hermione and Ron.

“I just wanted to have a bit of a chat with Sirius,” announced Harry. “That alright?”

“Absolutely,” replied Sirius cheerily.

“Let’s go down to the kitchen, shall we?” asked Harry. He didn’t wait for a reply; he just grabbed Sirius by the arm and dragged him out of the room.

“Well then…” said Remus, turning back to where Ron and Hermione stood. They were looking strangely nervous. “How have you been?”

“We’ve been alright,” said Hermione. “More or less.”

“A bit on the less side for me,” said Ron. He fidgeted a bit. “I was actually hoping I could talk to you about something?”

“Me?” asked Remus in surprise. He wasn’t used to people coming to him for things like advice. Harry had for a while, but that was primarily while he’d been his teacher. And while he knew the Weasley family fairly well, he’d interacted a lot more with the family’s older members; he hadn’t had a lot of one-on-one conversations with Ron outside of class. “Of course. Is something wrong?”

“Well not exactly _wrong_ ,” said Ron. “But I could use a bit of advice. From, you know…an adult. But I don’t really want to get my family involved. So…yeah.”

“Are you getting harassed at school?” he asked in concern.

“No,” replied Ron. “Well, not worse than Malfoy being his usual toe-rag self. But I guess that might happen if anyone…found out.”

“You’re not in trouble are you?” asked Remus.

“No,” said Ron. The fidgeting got worse and he was having trouble making eye contact.

“What’s wrong?” asked Remus kindly. “You don’t have to worry about me telling anyone. Unless your safety is at risk.”

“It’s not,” sighed Ron. He looked at the fireplace…then at the ceiling…then at Hermione. Hermione lightly elbowed him.

“Please don’t tell anyone!” he pleaded.

“I won’t,” affirmed Remus. He was really getting worried now. He’d never seen Ron look so distressed.

“Lately…” said Ron, “I mean…sometimes…well. Lately, sometimes I’ve been sort of maybe thinking a bit about blokes?”

Remus raised his eyebrows. “How so?” he asked, careful not to jump to any assumptions.

“ _You know_ ,” wheezed Ron. He coughed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Like… _romantically_.”

“Oh,” said Remus. “Well. There’s nothing wrong with that, you know.”

“I know!” said Ron quickly. “But it came on…kind of unexpected. And…I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Well,” said Remus. “Is there someone specific you have feelings for?”

“…Maybe?”

“If there isn’t then you don’t have to do anything about it right now. But if there is, you might want to think about whether or not to tell him. I wouldn’t rush into anything though. Make sure you’re really sure first.”

“I’m pretty sure about how _I_ feel. But I’m not so sure about the person I like. I’m afraid he might take it badly if I tell him.”

“Well, that’s always a risk, isn’t it?” agreed Remus. “That’s something you have to worry about with a girl as well.”

“But I don’t have to worry about everyone laughing at me if I get rejected by a girl,” said Ron. “It’s not the same.”

Remus frowned. Ron was repeating the very same sorts of things that he had angsted about himself at that age. And what had he done about it? Absolutely nothing. And where had that gotten him? Nearly to middle age and still miserably alone. He was the absolute worst person Ron could have come to for advice. He tried to convince himself that his lycanthropy was the real reason he’d never acted on his feelings, that his reservations had come from a sense of responsibility and not fear…but he knew that wasn’t entirely true. The only person he’d really wanted to pursue was Sirius, and _he_ wouldn’t have cared about dating a werewolf. But Sirius was straight. Remus hadn’t seen a point in setting himself up for inevitable rejection. Why would he have been so stupid to put a strain on their friendship when he knew it was hopeless anyway?

“Well,” said Remus awkwardly, now feeling a bit fidgety himself. “Do you, ah, know which way the person you are interested in leans?”

“I think he likes girls,” said Ron. “But I’m not sure if that’s all or not. H's a bit private with his feelings, you know.”

“Hm, well. That is a bit tricky, isn’t it?” agreed Remus. “Are you close friends?”

“Yes,” said Ron. “Definitely.”

“Well you seem like you have very good judgment,” said Remus. “And your friends that I do know are very high quality people.” He smiled at Hermione. “I suspect if someone is good friends with you then he probably isn't the sort to react very badly if you told him—even if he doesn't return your feelings. I’m sure you’ll stay friends. So if you want to tell him there’s probably no harm in it.”

Remus was rather proud of himself for saying that. It definitely sounded like good, teacherly advice. It was exactly the sort of advice he was _supposed_ to give. Exactly the sort of advice he’d personally never in a million years actually follow. _Good job, me_ , he thought.

“What would you do if one of your friends confessed to you?” asked Hermione suddenly.

Remus blanched. “Wh—what?” he said inarticulately.

Ron was looking significantly less nervous all of the sudden. And Hermione had an unnervingly eager expression on her face.

“That’s hardly relevant,” he stuttered. “That’s not—I’m not the sort of person that that sort of thing happens to. I can only give you advice from an abstract perspective.”

“But just in theory,” Hermione continued to probe. “Just, if. _If_ one of your friends, one of your _male_ friends were to confess to you. That wouldn’t make you uncomfortable, right?”

 _This whole conversation is making me uncomfortable_ , thought Remus.

“No,” he said. It took every effort of self-control to keep his voice steady. _They don’t know_ , he reminded himself. _They don’t know how you feel. They have no idea how cruel a suggestion that is_. Because Remus didn’t have a lot of friends left. There was only one person who would fit into that theoretical situation. Just one. Just…Sirius. And Sirius would never do that; there was no chance—that was for sure. And making him think about that impossible _what if_ put a sharp stabbing feeling in his chest.

“No,” he repeated. “I would be…flattered, I suppose. I wouldn’t say anything to make him feel bad about it. We would certainly stay friends.”

Hermione was looking at him very shrewdly, and Remus began to feel like he’d walked into some kind of a set-up. _Oh no. They DO know. Hermione is too bright for her own good. They figured you out!_

“Is there a reason you wanted to talk to _me_ specifically about this?” he asked suspiciously. “There are other adults who are probably more qualified to give relationship advice. You might have noticed that I don’t really do those.”

“Well we don’t know any adults who are… _you know_ ,” said Ron quickly. “But since you’re a werewolf we thought that maybe you might understand what it’s like being…different. I thought you might be the most understanding about how I feel.”

Remus let out a breath of relief. _Crisis averted. They’re not actually on to you._

“Ah, yes,” he agreed. “I most certainly do understand. Fortunately for you these days it’s quite a bit more socially acceptable to be attracted to blokes than to be a werewolf, so I don’t think you’ll have too bad of a time for it. But it’s true that people can be cruel. I wish I could promise you that you won’t have to deal with any terrible people, but I can’t. You’ll find though that for every thoughtless person you’ll also encounter people who are wonderfully supportive. If you choose to tell people you’ll really find out who your real friends are. And that can be a good thing in its own right. It was quite reassuring and liberating when my friends found out about me, although I had been dreading anyone knowing. I thought it would be the end of the world if anyone knew, but I was wrong about that.”

“Thanks Remus,” said Ron, looking significantly less stressed out. “That’s very helpful, actually.”

“Don’t feel pressured to tell people of course,” Remus added. “If you don’t want to. I know it seems like the expected thing to do. But it’s okay if you’re more comfortable staying discreet. You should do whatever you’re personally comfortable with.”

“I think it’s better to tell people,” Hermione objected. “You can miss out on a lot of _opportunities_ if you keep things bottled up.” She gave Remus an unsettlingly pointed look.

“Er…well. That really depends on the individual, doesn’t it?” Remus countered defensively. “But if you do tell people and anyone gives you a hard time…well. I happen to know an awful lot of hexes. So don’t be afraid to tell me about it.”

Ron laughed, looking relieved. “Thanks. I knew I could count on you.”

Hermione just gave him a knowing smile.

Remus gulped.

* * *

“So…” said Sirius, poking about in the pantry to see if he could find something to offer Harry…an utter failure, all he managed to find was a prehistoric jar of marmalade and some oatcakes that had gone moldy. He did locate a bottle of firewhisky but decided that might not be the most appropriate thing to put out, given the company. He had to resort to making some tea. “Making any progress with a certain fetching young red headed witch?”

“No,” said Harry unhappily. “I’m afraid not.”

“Need some pointers on talking to girls?” Sirius asked. “I used to know quite a lot of pick-up lines back in the day. I’m sure I could remember some good ones. Though I’m not so sure that Ginny is the type to go for that.”

Harry laughed. “She wouldn’t fall for that in a second,” he agreed. “But I actually wanted to talk about you, not me.”

“Me?” asked Sirius in surprise. “I’m afraid that not a whole lot is going on with me to talk about.”

“Well,” said Harry. “It was really great spending time with you in Hogsmeade the other day. But I realized afterwards that we’d mainly spent the entire time talking about me, and I felt bad. How have you been lately?”

“I’ve been quite good,” Sirius lied.

“Are you getting out much, now that you don’t have to stay in hiding?”

“A bit, yeah,” said Sirius with a shrug. He slid a mug of tea over to Harry.

“Have you, um, met anyone?”

Sirius’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you asking me if I’ve picked up a girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” said Harry. “Or…you know. Any other type of person.”

Sirius’s eyebrows shot up even higher. He leaned back in his chair. “Are you asking me if I’ve picked up a _boyfriend_?” He tried to keep his voice light and joking. No need to give Harry too much information if he hadn’t actually guessed.

“Erm, have you?” asked Harry. “I just thought…well. I shouldn’t assume one way or the other. You’ve never mentioned any past girlfriends, or anything.”

“There were past girls. Just none significant enough to mention,” said Sirius with a shrug. “And no. I haven’t picked anyone up, of either gender persuasion.”

“Have you been looking?” asked Harry.

“Er…no.” _Not a lie_ , he thought. _I didn’t need to look, he was already right there_. Sirius took a large gulp of tea to fill the awkwardness of all his unvoiced thoughts.

“I’d be happy to help, you know,” supplied Harry. “If you were looking to meet someone. Or, you know, already had someone in mind.”

“That’s very kind of you Harry,” said Sirius with a fond smile. “But I think your energy would be better spent focusing on your own love life. I’m a bit of a mess, honestly. I don’t see myself going down that road any time soon.”

“You’re not a mess!” said Harry fervently. “You’re _great_. Anyone would be really lucky to be with you!”

“I appreciate your enthusiastic sentiment,” said Sirius with a wry smile. “But I suspect not everyone shares your point of view.”

“I think Tonks likes you,” announced Harry.

Sirius choked on his tea. “What would give you _that_ idea?” he coughed.

“She got really upset while you were gone. And she’s improved since you’ve been back.”

An irritated scowl started to pull at Sirius’s mouth. “That has nothing to do with _me_ ,” he muttered. “I’m sure the timing is a coincidence. She most certainly has her designs set on someone else.”

“That bothers you?” asked Harry.

“I’m not interested in Tonks,” Sirius assured.

“You sound bothered though,” Harry pressed.

“It’s none of my business who my cousin wants to pursue,” said Sirius, crossing his arms.

“Who is she after, if it’s not you then?” asked Harry.

“Remus,” sighed Sirius.

“And you don’t approve?”

“I never said that, did I?” Sirius traced a water stain on the tabletop with his finger instead of looking at Harry. “They’d make a superb couple. I’m honestly not sure why Remus is taking so long to do anything about it. I’m sure he likes her too.”

“You wish he didn’t though, don’t you?” Harry pried.

Sirius very slowly lifted his head up and eyed his godson. He didn’t even need to ask, he could tell by the look on Harry’s face that he’d already been found out. He let out a long, overly dramatic sigh. “You kids are entirely too sharp for your own good, you know that?”

“You should talk to him about it,” suggested Harry.

“No fair to throw my own advice back at me,” complained Sirius. “The situation is entirely different.”

“It doesn’t look that different to me,” replied Harry. “Ginny and I are good friends. You and Remus are also good friends. They both are interested in someone else, but it’s not necessarily really locked in. It’s rather similar, actually.”

“You’re forgetting the rather important detail where we know for a fact that Ginny fancies blokes and I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to think that Remus does,” said Sirius. “World of difference.”

“You haven’t really been going around telling people that _you_ fancy blokes either,” pointed out Harry. “So you can’t really be sure he doesn’t unless you actually talk to him, can you?”

“He’s skittish,” said Sirius dismissively. “I don’t want to freak him out.”

“I’m pretty sure he could handle it,” said Harry.

“He’s had to struggle with being different his whole life and he hates it. He has enough burdens already. Even if…even if he did feel the same I still think he’d be happier with Tonks.”

“You shouldn’t assume that without talking to him.”

“Look I really appreciate the support, Harry. I’ll admit it’s a big relief to know that you approve. But I know him really well. And I can recognize a bad idea when I see it. Things are already kind of strained right now. I’m not going to go there.”

“What if _I_ talked to him for you?” suggested Harry.

“Oh, _blimey_ , no! Don’t say anything to him!” Sirius waved his hands in a panicked gesture. “Not a _word_ to him!”

“You know what I think?” said Harry leaning across the table. “I think you’re just scared. It sounds to me like you’re making excuses.”

“I am _not_!” exclaimed Sirius. “I’ll have you know—”

“I think you’re definitely scared,” Harry interrupted. “And I think that my dad would be disappointed in you.”

Sirius’s mouth dropped open in shock. Those were _fighting_ words. He couldn’t believe Harry would say that.

“You—” he began, not even really sure what he was going to follow up with, he was still too disarmed from the unexpectedness of Harry’s attack.

His attempt to retort was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“What the—?” Sirius muttered, jumping up from the table. “Who the bloody hell would be calling on us now?”

He opened the door to find Molly and Arthur Weasley standing on the front stoop with a large basket of food.

“Oh…” he said in complete surprise. “Hello…?”

“Hello Sirius, dear,” said Molly, pushing her way in without being invited. “You haven’t had supper yet, have you? Tonks mentioned that Remus has been seeming poorly, and Merlin knows you two don’t take proper care of yourselves, so I just thought it would be no trouble to make a bit of extra food and pop by.”

“Uh…” said Sirius.

“Good heavens!” Molly exclaimed, peering past Sirius’s shoulder. “Arthur! _Harry’s_ here! Well hello dear!”

“Hello,” said Arthur looking mildly embarrassed. “Sorry for not owling first. Molly was afraid you’d refuse. Hello Harry!”

“It’s a good thing we brought extra!” said Molly. “Why don’t we all have a proper meal together?”

“That would be excellent!” agreed Harry. “I’ll go get Ron and Hermione!”

“Ron and Hermione are here as well? Goodness! I wish I’d cooked more potatoes,” said Molly, sounding simultaneously worried and delighted.

“I’ll just run out and get some extra ingredients, shall I?” offered Arthur. Before Sirius could say anything one way or the other he dashed out the door.

“Sure…” Sirius muttered under his breath. “Sounds great. Just make yourselves at home, why don’t you? Don’t ask me or anything.”

No one heard him though. His words were completely drowned out by the sound of Molly rearranging the kitchen.

* * *

If given a choice between spending the evening wrestling blast-ended skrewts and sitting through the awkward ‘family supper’ that Molly had incited, Sirius would have chosen the skrewts.

‘Awkward’ did not begin to cover it.

When Harry returned from fetching everyone upstairs, Remus had emerged looking like he’d just swallowed a bucket-full of puking pastilles. Ron looked mildly ill as well. Hermione was sporting an alarmingly self-satisfied smug grin.

Molly was being overly friendly but there was still an undercurrent of tension with her as well.

“No chocolate on the biscuits,” she said pointedly as they set out the table.

“That’s very considerate of you Molly,” said Remus tensely.

 _You look like you could use some chocolate today though_ , thought Sirius.

“So…what’s the occasion that has everyone visiting?” asked Arthur amicably.

Several people all answered at once.

“Just offering some help on their D.A.D.A. homework,” said Remus.

“Only a social call,” said Hermione.

“Looking for some advice on impressing _girls_ ,” said Ron loudly.

“Asking Sirius why he isn’t dating anyone,” said Harry even louder.

Molly and Arthur’s heads whipped back and forth, trying to keep up with all the different statements.

“ _Harry_ ,” hissed Sirius warningly. He tried to kick his godson under the table, but missed and accidently kicked Arthur instead.

“Excuse me?” yelped Arthur in surprise.

“You should be focusing on your studies,” said Molly, giving Ron a reproving look. “You’ll have plenty of time to worry about girls after you’ve graduated.”

“Can’t help it,” said Ron. “Girls are just so amazing. They’re always on my mind. Girls, girls, girls.”

Hermione’s smugness melted into an irritated scowl.

“Yes, well,” said Remus even more tensely. “I advised he not rush into anything.” He raised an eyebrow at Ron.

“That’s very good advice,” agreed Sirius. “Rushing into things is always a _bad_ idea.”

“I’d never catch the snitch if I spent all my time waiting,” said Harry.

“That’s right,” agreed Ron. “The love of your life could just whiz right by and leave you to get socked by a bludger.” He mimed a flying motion with his hand and then shrugged.

“Wow, Ron,” said Hermione sarcastically. “That’s stunningly poignant advice. Perhaps you should consider actually taking it.”

“I have no idea what you’re insinuating,” said Ron. He shoved a forkful of broccoli in his mouth and aggressively chewed it.

“I think waiting is better,” announced Molly. “Young people are always so eager to rush into things. Bill and Fleur got engaged _so_ fast, for example. I’m sure that if they had just taken things a bit slower they surely would have realized….” She sighed wistfully.

“They seem happy,” offered Remus.

“He could have been happy with Tonks,” said Molly unhappily. “They would have made a lovely pair. But I suppose it’s not to be. She seems to quite get on with _you_ though, Remus dear.”

“Oh. Uh. Yes, I suppose,” said Remus. He stabbed at a piece of chicken and didn’t look up.

“Perhaps we should have invited her,” continued Molly. “If this hadn’t been such a spontaneous thing I would have thought of that.”

“It’s fine,” said Remus quickly.

“He already sees her quite often,” said Sirius bitterly.

“Not _that_ often,” muttered Remus.

“She comes round practically every other day,” complained Sirius.

“No she doesn’t,” said Remus.

“Well I think she should,” said Molly. “It must get terribly dull and lonely for you two being in this big old place all alone.”

“Not really,” mumbled Sirius.

“Harry’s right, Sirius. Why aren’t you dating anyone? We need to find you someone so you won’t end up all alone when Tonks snatches this one away.” Molly pointed at Remus.

Sirius slammed his fork down on a boiled potato, which rolled away at the contact, causing the metal tinges to impact loudly on porcelain. _Clack!_

“I uh, think maybe you’re getting a bit ahead of things Molly,” said Remus in a strained voice.

“Don’t tell me that you aren’t interested in her _either_ ,” said Molly disapprovingly. “Tonks is _lovely_.”

“She _is_ lovely,” Remus agreed.

Sirius made another loud attempt at stabbing his elusive potato. A bit of the gold leaf decoration on the plate flaked off under the harsh scrape of his fork.

“Careful Sirius!” said Molly. “Those plates must be centuries old!”

“Long overdue to get replaced if you ask me,” he muttered. He deliberately scratched at the flaking gold, further ruining the antique design.

“No need to get so surly,” replied Molly. “I think you would certainly benefit from some expanded socializing. There are some very sweet girls in my local knitting club. Why don’t I have you round for tea with them sometime?”

Sirius looked up and stared at Remus, gauging his friend’s reaction. Remus wasn’t looking at him. He was staring off at a spider web on the wood paneling and listlessly pushing his food around.

“I’ll…consider that,” said Sirius slowly. “Thank you Molly. Although I’ll warn you that my tastes are very _particular_.”

“You should elaborate so Mrs. Weasley knows your type,” encouraged Harry. “No point in wasting anyone’s time, is there?”

“Yes, Sirius,” joined in Hermione. “Do specify.”

Sirius narrowed his eyes as he looked between Harry and Hermione. It suddenly occurred to him how Harry had gleamed his sudden insightfulness about his feelings. He shot Hermione a quick glare.

“ _Gladly_ ,” he bit out. “For starters I definitely have a thing for quiet bookish types.”

Harry nodded approvingly.

Hermione smirked.

Remus didn’t react.

“And,” he added, “a sense of humor is a must. It’s especially important to be amenable to pranks and mischief.”

“Well, obviously,” agreed Ron. “That’s just good taste.”

“Definitely,” confirmed Harry.

Molly frowned.

Arthur was staring rather intently between Sirius and Remus with a puzzled expression marring his face.

Remus took a very large gulp of his gilly water.

“I prefer brunets, of course,” Sirius continued. “But you know, the lighter type is best. More of a burnt yellow ochre than a true brown. Mahogany or umber is too dark. I’m very attracted to the sandy look. Especially when paired with green eyes.”

“That is…extremely specific,” commented Molly.

Sirius eyed Remus, who still wasn’t looking at him.

“And a nice big rack wouldn’t hurt,” he blurted out. “But that’s not a deal breaker.”

Remus dropped his fork, scattering bits of broccoli and potato all over the ancient heirloom table.

“Excuse me,” he choked out. “I just need a bit of air. I’ll be right back.” He stiffly speed-walked out of the dining room.

“I feel like I’m missing something,” said Molly, staring at the closed door Remus had disappeared through.

“Um, Sirius,” said Arthur in an odd voice. He still looked somewhat confused, but there was a suspicious edge to his expression that Sirius didn’t like the look of. “Maybe you should go check on him and see if Remus is alright.”

“I think that’s a _very_ good idea,” agreed Harry heartily.

“Yes, Sirius,” contributed Hermione. “You should go talk to Remus.”

“Go get ’im,” smirked Ron.

Sirius sighed and stood up. “I’m sure he’s fine,” he muttered. “But if you all _insist_ ….” He shoved his chair in and marched towards the door.

“I’m _definitely_ missing something,” complained Molly.

* * *

He found Remus on the front steps, leaning against the marble doorframe.

“Hey,” he said awkwardly.

Remus didn’t turn to look at him. He kept staring at the wrought iron gate a few feet away.

“What are you doing, Sirius,” he asked lowly.

“Checking on you.” Sirius tried to sound casual and not like he was digging himself into some sort of terrible inescapable hole. “Arthur thought that—”

“That’s not what I meant,” interrupted Remus. He turned and locked his eyes on Sirius. “What are you _doing_?”

Remus’s eyes were a deep bottle green under the weak street lighting. Sirius had expected to see irritation in them, or anger maybe. Instead they looked unfathomably sad and resigned. It made his breath catch to realize he’d somehow been the one to do that to them.

“Well, I—” he started.

“Are you making fun of me?” Remus asked tiredly.

“No!” said Sirius quickly. “I—”

“Because I’m really not up for it,” continued Remus. “I know we have a history of joking around to an extreme. But there’s a line, Padfoot. This isn’t funny.”

“I didn’t mean for it to be,” said Sirius.

“Well what exactly _did_ you mean?” challenged Remus.

 _This is it,_ thought Sirius. _This is the moment you’re supposed to tell him. Everyone and their uncle are expecting you to tell him. Here’s your big opening._

“Well, I—” he began again. He reached out and put his hand on Remus’s shoulder. The way he could feel Remus’s body tensing up and turning to stone beneath his fingers made his heart drop down into his shoes.

“I think you should get together with Tonks.”

The words spilled out of his mouth like horrible poisoned missiles. Sirius immediately wanted to call them back, but it was too late. They’d already detonated and ruined everything. He really needed to break his habit of doing that.

“I see.”

“It’s just…” he tried. “I mean, I just want to see you happy,” he said lamely. “ _Everyone_ wants to see you happy. And your reasons for turning her down are rubbish. You’re worth a lot more than you think, and if you want something you should actually go for it and stop rationalizing why you don’t deserve it. Because you do, you know. You deserve nice things.”

“Do…you really think that?” Remus’s stare was piercing in the darkness.

“I do,” breathed Sirius. “Absolutely.”

Remus chewed on his lip and Sirius couldn’t tear his eyes away. He imagined replacing Remus’s teeth with his own and the swooping sensation in his stomach made him feel a bit dizzy.

“You probably shouldn’t think that,” muttered Remus. He extracted himself from Sirius’s hand and stepped back towards the door. “But I’ll certainly consider what you’ve said.”

“You should,” said Sirius.

“Please thank Arthur and Molly for the nice meal. I’m not feeling well enough to come back and finish,” said Remus quietly. He disappeared through the door without another word.

“Neither am I,” mumbled Sirius to the empty street.

* * *

Remus paced around his room until he felt woozy and needed to sit down. He wasn’t sure if the sudden vertigo was from the circling or the heady proximity he’d just shared with Sirius in the twilight.

For a minute there he’d actually thought Sirius might—

But no, that was just his imagination, tricked into hopefulness by those damned leading questions Hermione and Ron had bombarded him with.

Had everyone gone completely mad?

Had he?

Maybe he _was_ mad. Maybe everyone else was right. Here he had a wonderful person practically throwing herself at him and all he seemed to be able to do about it was pretend he wasn’t noticing and it wasn’t happening. What kind of fool was he to turn down such a rare opportunity? He _liked_ Dora. He really did. Maybe he could have even felt more for her if things had only been different.

But they weren’t different and his feelings were too wrapped up in someone else for him to think straight. And as a result he was just making them _both_ miserable, all because of someone who could never return his feelings.

Was there a point in both of them being miserable? Wouldn’t it be better if he could make at least one of them happy? He was going to be wretched either way, so maybe it would be better if at least Dora got what she wanted. It seemed to be what everyone else wanted too, Sirius included.

Was that the right thing to do?

He supposed he could at least give it a try.

Maybe he could learn to love her back. Maybe in time he could come to find his happiness in her colorful jubilance and bright smiles and stop thinking so much about stormy eyes and clever smirks and complicated plots long past executed.

He could try.

* * *

“Well you look sharp.”

Sirius’s compliment was strained, his smile twisted into more of a cringe. He was eyeing Remus’s outfit with calculating scrutiny. He happened to be wearing a suit instead of robes, and unlike the suits he usually wore; this one wasn’t especially shabby or ill fitting. Since he had had the advantage of bumming room and board off of Sirius for so long he’d actually had enough money to scrape together and go out and buy a new one (well, new to him. It had still come from a second-hand shop. But it happened to be one of those classier second hand shops where people with decent money dropped off barely used things.)

While Remus would never go so far as to say he looked _nice_ , he was self aware enough to tell that he at least looked nicer than usual. And Sirius was clearly noticing. And clearly not particularly thrilled about it.

“Well, I felt I had to. I’m going to the theatre,” he explained.

“You’re going to the theatre?”

“Yeah. One of those Muggle ones, in the West End.”

“Got a hot date?” Sirius practically spit the words out.

Remus frowned. Sirius was being awfully rancorous for someone who had _encouraged_ him to do exactly what he was doing.

“Well, I suppose. I have _a_ date,” he mumbled. “Thought Dora would enjoy going to the theatre, she seems the theatrical type, and all that.”

His actual reason for choosing their date activity was that you weren’t allowed to talk during a play, and therefore he didn’t have to worry about thinking of anything to say. He wouldn’t have to _do_ anything and so it wouldn’t matter that his heart wasn’t really in their date. It was a total cop-out effort, but theatres were considered nice and upscale and hopefully Dora would be happy enough that his underlying motivations wouldn’t matter. She’d certainly been pleased enough when he’d suggested it.

“Sounds _divine_ ,” said Sirius dryly.

Remus shrugged. “I thought it would be a nice change from just going to the Leaky Cauldron.”

“Ah,” said Sirius. “You’ve been going on lots of dates then?”

“No,” said Remus. “This is the first one. We’ve only been to the Leaky Cauldron as, you know, friends and colleagues.”

“Well. _Congratulations_.” Sirius clapped him on his back, and Remus was pretty sure he was not imagining that Sirius’s fingers lingered there just a second too long. He definitely wasn’t imagining the way they softly trailed down his arm as he pulled away instead of immediately releasing him.

The contact sparked a tight coil of heat in his gut, which was only made worse by the way Sirius’s eyes were sweeping across his body and not-so-subtly checking him out.

_If he didn’t know better he’d think…_

He _did_ know better though…right?

Sirius didn’t….

He couldn’t….

“Don’t do anything _I_ wouldn’t do,” said Sirius with a cheeky wink.

“Uhh…” Remus’s brain had suddenly decided to go on holiday and leave him at barely functioning Neanderthal capacity. “Right. Um. I don’t think that’s possible actually,” he rasped out. “There’s not much you wouldn’t, is there?”

Sirius’s face darkened again. “You’d be surprised, actually,” he muttered. With that he sharply turned and started walking away. “Enjoy your show!” he called out with painfully forced cheerfulness.

Remus just stared, completely dumbstruck as he watched Sirius’s retreating back. (Sirius’s back, which happened to look ridiculously posh and sexy no matter what he was wearing, regardless of how shabby or ill-fitting, not that his clothes usually were.)

“What…what was _that_?” stuttered Remus.

The deserted hallway had no answer for him.

* * *

Remus poked at his plate of sweet and sour chicken and prayed that Dora wouldn’t actually want to discuss the play.

Of _course_ she wanted to discuss the play.

“The set design was so creative!” she gushed. “And those _costumes_. Muggles really can get inventive even without magic, can’t they?”

“Oh…yes.” Remus nodded. “Absolutely.”

“The music was so catchy,” she said happily. “I wouldn’t mind listening to some of those songs again, would you?”

“Oh, not at all.” Remus nodded.

“The dialogue was quite funny too,” she continued.

“Hilarious,” Remus agreed, nodding vigorously. He was beginning to feel a bit like one of those bobble head things that Muggles sometimes put in cars.

“What was your favorite part?” she asked.

 _Oh shite_. Remus panicked. He’d barely heard a single word of the entire production. He’d _tried_ to focus on the play, but his mind had been stuck miles away, in a continual loop of replaying that heated (and possibly possessive?) glance that Sirius had skimmed across him before he’d turned to leave. Even now with Dora putting him on the spot he was having trouble keeping his thoughts on track and not on _Sirius’s eyes_.

“Erm…” he frantically scanned his memory, trying to recall some part of the play. “The bit with the stamps.”

Dora’s neatly sculpted turquoise eyebrows crept up. “The bit with the stamps?” she asked in confusion.

“Er, yes,” he said sheepishly. “That one fellow. He, er, said he collected stamps. And everyone was surprised. And then it turned out he only had two. Everyone laughed.”

Her brow creased as she clearly tried to remember. “Oh!” she exclaimed, obviously recalling the reference. “Yes. That was a small bit. But it was rather funny.”

She was smiling at him in an adoring way that Remus knew was quite attractive and endearing and ought to be making him giddy with happiness instead of guilt. _Why_ couldn’t he just enjoy this? What the blazes was wrong with him?

“I liked the end when the main characters finally reunited after continuously missing each other,” she sighed.

“Right,” agreed Remus. “That was nice.”

_Nice? What kind of thing to say was ‘nice?’ Your maybe-sort-of-girlfriend just opined on how romantic something was and all you can call it is ‘nice’? What is wrong with you, man?_

“That one actor was very cute,” she commented, twirling a noodle around her chopstick.

“Mmhmm,” agreed Remus, not fully paying attention.

“I think he sort of looked a little bit like Sirius,” she said slyly.

Remus began to nod and then froze, as her statement fully sunk in. “Uh…I don’t know,” he fumbled. “Can’t say I noticed.”

“You were staring at him the entire time,” she said sadly.

“Was I?” Remus’s voice came out a lot squeakier and higher pitched than normal.

“Couldn’t tear your eyes away,” she confirmed.

“I…uh…liked his costume,” he lamely excused.

“It was almost exactly the same as the other background characters,” she said.

“He had a nice bolo tie,” mumbled Remus.

“Can’t say I noticed,” echoed Dora.

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Remus tried to finish his food but the sauce that had at first been tangy and delicious now felt cloying on his tongue and seemed to catch in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” be sighed, putting down his chopsticks. “Look, Dora. I’m _really_ sorry.”

She prodded her own barely touched food. “I get it,” she said unhappily. “I’m not blind. Thanks for trying at least.”

“I really like you,” he said. “I _do_. It’s just….”

“I know,” she sighed. “I noticed.”

“I’m _so_ sorry. You…you deserve better than me, anyway, you know?”

“Let’s not make this any worse than it already is,” she said.

“I know this is a really git thing to say, but, can we stay friends?”

She cringed and looked down at the table. “I’m too selfish to completely give you up,” she mumbled. “So I guess we must, mustn’t we?”

“I’d uh…like that.”

“Alright then.”

“Alright.”

“So…” she sighed. “I don’t suppose you’d fancy a coffee before we head back, would you?”

Remus felt a bit of the unbearable tension finally crack. “I could really go for that right now, actually. Thanks, Dora.”

“Anytime,” she said with a watery smile.

* * *

It was with a huge sigh of relief that Remus finally returned to 12 Grimmauld Place. He felt really terrible for breaking up with Dora (did it even count as breaking up when they hadn’t even gotten so far as their first kiss?) but at the same time it was like a huge burden had fallen off of him. He could stop pretending, he could stop trying to force himself to feel a certain way and simply like her the way he actually did and not the way everyone expected him to.

He could stop trying to shuffle his attention back and forth between her and Sirius and just….

…Did Sirius actually _want_ his attention focused on him? _Like that_?

Remus was no longer so sure that his feelings were as one-sided as he’d always assumed. As he’d been nearly certain they were for years and years and years.

Was he actually seeing what he thought he was seeing in all those glances and innuendos that Sirius suddenly kept dropping? Or was he only projecting and seeing what he wanted to see?

Did it matter?

He’d already sworn to himself that he’d distance his feelings so that he wouldn’t get hurt when Sirius inevitably did something stupid and fatally played the hero again. But it was an awful lot easier to stick to that resolution when he assumed that he had no chance of them being together. Could he still shut Sirius out when it meant giving up an actual relationship?

It would hurt so much worse if he lost Sirius after getting to be with him properly. He wouldn’t be able to bear it.

But then, he hadn’t really been able to bear it when he’d lost him the first time, had he? Could it actually even get worse than that? Was it enough of a difference to matter?

Maybe the missed opportunity is actually what would hurt the most.

Although maybe he was getting ahead of himself by even assuming there was an opportunity there at all.

Remus’s head was swimming with all of the _maybes_ and _what ifs_.

Well. He wasn’t going to figure any of this out unless he investigated, was he?

Remus squared his shoulders and headed upstairs. He’d get to the bottom of whatever was going on with Sirius, whatever it took.

* * *

 

Sirius was halfway through a bottle of firewhisky and well into his third round of ‘What Shall We Do with a Drunken Hippogriff’ when the door to the drawing room unexpectedly opened and Remus stepped in.

He cut off his singing with a strangled choke. He really hadn’t expected to see Remus back so soon. He actually hadn’t expected to see Remus back until the following morning, which is something he very much did not want to be aware of, which was why he’d been working very hard at making sure he was too passed out in the morning to notice.

Remus strolled over and pried the firewhisky bottle out of Sirius’s hand and sat down across from him, taking a swig.

“Having fun?” asked Remus.

Sirius shrugged. “It’s bound to be more fun now. You’re back earlier than expected.”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “It’s half past midnight.”

“You have werewolf stamina, thought you could probably be at it for hours.”

“I don’t think any of the restaurants in Chinatown are open that late,” commented Remus.

“You didn’t go back to her place?” asked Sirius. He tried not to sound overly invested in the question, but he was drunk, so he was probably failing miserably.

“Well, considering that her place is back in Hogsmeade, it really would have made more sense for me to bring her back here, wouldn’t it?”

Sirius’s throat suddenly felt very dry. He wished that Remus hadn’t stolen his bottle. “You could’ve,” he muttered. “Hope you didn’t cut things short on my account.”

“I think,” said Remus slowly, eyeing him from over the bottle as he took another swig, “that it carried on quite long enough.”

Sirius stared at Remus, trying to decipher what he meant. “Bad date?” he asked.

“It was okay,” said Remus. “The play was…well, it was a play, I suppose. And the food was edible. Dora was lovely….”

“I’m sure she was,” said Sirius tightly. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. It was all he could do to stop himself from reaching over and snatching his alcohol back from Remus and downing the entire remains in a single gulp. He did _not_ want to hear Remus waxing poetic on how bloody fantastic his bloody cousin’s bloody womanly charms were. Bloody hell.

“She was especially lovely in the way she took the news when I broke up with her,” said Remus casually. “Very graceful.”

“She—wait, you what?” Sirius blinked and gaped at Remus, fairly certain he’d heard him wrong.

“I broke up with her,” said Remus, scratching his chin. “Or I suppose she sort of set me up for it, in all honesty. So I’m not sure I should take credit for that.”

“ _She_ broke up with _you_?” squeaked Sirius.

“More or less,” confirmed Remus.

“Is she bloody _mad_?” Sirius found himself caught in a confusing mix of being elated at the news and ridiculously indignant that his daft cousin could toss away her chance at the most desirable relationship in existence. He sat up a little straighter and leaned forward, trying to get a better read on Remus’s enigmatic expression.

“Not in the slightest,” said Remus. “She’s quite sane.”

“Doesn’t sound very sane to me,” said Sirius with a frown. “Are you okay? Do you want me to, I don’t know, yell at her or something? Are you going to try to fix it?”

“It’s not fixable.”

“I’m…sorry, mate,” said Sirius (only a little bit insincerely.)

“It’s fine,” said Remus. “The chemistry just wasn’t really there.”

“Ah,” said Sirius. He wondered what exactly it would take for Remus to find noteworthy chemistry with someone. If a nice-funny-smart-shape-shifter couldn’t do it for him, who even had a chance?

“So I suppose I’m single now,” said Remus, kicking his feet up on the arm of the settee. “Completely unattached.”

“That’s too bad,” lied Sirius.

Remus shrugged. “I’m fine with it.” He took another big gulp of the firewhisky and held it out towards Sirius. “Mostly fine with it, anyway.”

“Mostly?” Sirius gratefully reached out for the bottle. He unabashedly let his fingers drag over Remus’s as he took it, convincing himself he could just blame it on his drunkenness if Remus called him out on it. Remus didn’t call him out.

“Well, I wouldn’t be opposed to considering some other options, of course,” he elaborated. “If something were to come along.”

“Oh,” said Sirius. He tried to think of something else to say. But all he could really do was stare at the long line of Remus’s neck as he tilted his head back against the back of the settee, and think about how much he suddenly wanted to lick it. He drunkenly wondered if he could actually get away with that if he turned into Padfoot first.

Nah. That would probably be weird.

Guess he wasn’t drunk enough.

Remus stared at him as if he was expecting him to say something. Sirius tried really hard to accommodate, but suddenly articulating anything coherent seemed like an insurmountable task. The ‘things I want to say’ and ‘things I actually ought to say’ were swimming around in tangled jumbles in his head and trying to appropriately detangle them was just too difficult. He filled the silence with the slant of the firewhisky bottle instead.

“You’re really drunk, aren’t you?” Remus finally asked quietly.

“Not half as much as I wanted to be,” mumbled Sirius.

“I think we should probably get you to bed.”

 _Want to join me?_ Sirius was rather proud of himself for managing to censor that thought.

Remus got up and once again removed the (now much emptier) bottle from Sirius’s fingers. “C’mon,” he said, pulling Sirius to his feet.

Sirius allowed himself to slump unsteadily against the steadfast weight of his friend. He might have pretended to be just a smidge unsteadier than he really was, but Remus didn’t need to know. A strong arm wound around his waist, holding him up.

“Tonks is crazy,” Sirius muttered into Remus’s shoulder.

“Is she now.” There was a tinge of amusement to Remus’s voice.

“Mad as a crumple-horned snorkack,” confirmed Sirius.

“That’s pretty mad,” observed Remus.

“You’d have to be to give up you,” admitted Sirius, in a slip of booze-loosened honesty.

Remus didn’t say anything, but the arm around Sirius’s waist may have tightened a fraction.

…Or maybe that was just Remus struggling with the door.

“I’m really drunk,” he suddenly felt compelled to admit.

“I know, Pads,” said Remus, guiding Sirius over to his bed.

“I’m—I’m glad you’re talking to me again,” he mumbled as he dropped onto his duvet.

There was a long stretch of silence in which Sirius nearly fell asleep. He was jarred back to alertness by a brief but firm squeeze on his shoulder.

“Me too,” whispered Remus. With that he silently slipped out of the room and Sirius let unconsciousness pull him back under.


	7. Miscommunications Dismantled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did succeed at writing a scene that warranted raising the rating of this story to explicit. If you'd prefer to read it without the sex scene in it you can find a censored version [here](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12039068/7/The-Grim-Watch). Or you could just skip over the section when you get to Remus's POV if you want to keep reading it here. There's one final wrap up scene after the explicit part.

Sirius woke up to a splitting headache and the smell of frying sausages. For a moment he was confused to where he was. Had he somehow woken up at the Burrow? Since when was 12 Grimmauld Place filled with the smell of cooking? And _good_ cooking at that? He and Remus usually lived on take-away and things that were no-fuss to cook. Like toast.

Maybe Molly had bullied her way back over to continue torturing them, he thought unhappily. He considered just staying in his room all day in protest, but with a hangover to deal with the allure of solid food was a bit too much to pass up. He hesitantly ventured downstairs.

Molly was not in the kitchen. There was only Remus. Remus and two plates filled with what looked like a full English breakfast. Sirius gaped.

“What’s—what’s all this?” he asked.

“Thought you might benefit from something substantial,” said Remus with smile. “You had a lot of firewhisky last night.”

“You can cook?” asked Sirius in surprise.

Remus shrugged. “I’ve lived mostly on my own for the last 15 years. Had to learn to feed myself.”

 _You don’t look like you feed yourself_ , thought Sirius. “Yeah…but. I’ve never seen you actually do anything like this before.”

“I’m rarely in the mood to bother,” admitted Remus. “Doesn’t usually feel worth the effort. Simple stuff is good enough. And,” he coughed, looking embarrassed, “cheaper.”

 _Ah,_ thought Sirius regretfully. _It’s the money_.

“We didn’t have any of these ingredients,” he commented, hungrily taking in the spread of eggs, meat, beans, tomatoes and mushrooms. “I hope you used _my_ money to get it all.”

Remus shrugged and didn’t answer. “Tea or coffee?” he asked instead.

“Both?” asked Sirius after a minute of indecision.

Remus chuckled. “As you wish,” he said, heading back to the kitchen.

The _‘as you wish’_ did funny twisting things to Sirius’s insides as he tried not to dwell on how much he wanted to read into it but shouldn’t.

“Wow,” said Sirius, trailing after his unusually chipper mate, “you must have had a _really_ good date last night.”

Remus turned as he filled up the kettle, his cheerful smile faltering a little. “It was alright,” he said. “Can’t remember last night, eh?”

Sirius scanned his memory, which was definitely running on the hazy side.

“Erm,” he stalled. “I think you came back a bit sooner than I expected? And there was…drinking. And…I dunno. Did something else happen?”

“No,” said Remus, dropping a tea bag into an empty mug. “Nothing happened. We just talked briefly.”

“Am I forgetting anything important?” asked Sirius, feeling a bit uneasy suddenly.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Remus, shooing him back to the table. “You should eat. I’ll have the drinks ready in a moment.”

Sirius sat down, the uneasy feeling definitely lingering. But the enticing smells of breakfast quickly distracted him.

“Galloping griffins,” groaned Sirius as he eagerly shoveled fried eggs into his mouth. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

“You never asked me to cook,” said Remus smugly. He sat two mugs down in front of Sirius, and returned to his own place with a third mug of tea in hand.

“I regret my life choices,” affirmed Sirius. “You should have said.”

“Well, then I would have been stuck cooking,” said Remus. “I never said I actually _enjoy_ it. Always felt like a waste of time to me. All that work for something you finish off in a matter of minutes with nothing to show for it afterwards.” He shrugged.

“Just my undying adoration,” said Sirius around a forkful of sausage.

“Well.” Remus took a sip of his tea. His own food was still untouched. “That might be a persuasive arrangement.”

Sirius felt Remus’s foot brush against his under the table but in a second it was gone again. The sudden flurry of butterflies it sparked made him sorry that he had been guzzling his food so voraciously. He now felt a bit queasy.

Had that been an accident?

They were sitting at an awfully large table.

Sirius peered at Remus, but Remus’s face was completely mild and gave no indication that anything had happened. He was calmly buttering a piece of toast.

“So…um….” Sirius searched for something to talk about to distract himself from the way his heart had unexpectedly geared into overdrive. “How’d you learn to cook so well?” he asked. “Did you take lessons?”

“Worked in a few Muggle restaurants when trying to scrape by with jobs,” said Remus. “Picked things up here and there.”

“Oh.” Sirius frowned. He really hated these reminders that he hadn’t been around to help Remus out while he was struggling. “I didn’t know you’d taken work like that. What other sorts of jobs did you do?”

“Oh, bit of everything, really,” said Remus with a shrug. “Worked in quite a few shops, both Muggle and Wizard. It tended to be easier to hold down the Muggle ones because they didn’t get as suspicious about the time missed. Did some freelance editing. Some tutoring. A couple of research positions. A few construction jobs. Courier work…if you can think of it, I probably tried it.”

“You don’t have to do any of that anymore, you know,” said Sirius. “My money is yours.”

“I’m not here to be a drain on you Padfoot,” said Remus easily. “You’re doing quite enough by giving me a place to stay.”

“That’s not enough,” Sirius insisted. “You shouldn’t have to do all that.”

“I actually _liked_ some of those jobs you know,” said Remus. “Tutoring quite suits me.”

“Yes, I suppose it would,” agreed Sirius. “But if you’re having trouble finding work—”

“Dumbledore has been giving me a stipend for my Order of the Phoenix missions,” said Remus. “You don’t need to worry.”

“Good man,” said Sirius, feeling a bit better.

“The finest,” agreed Remus.

“I don’t approve of some of the missions he sent you on though,” added Sirius.

“They were necessary.”

“Not more necessary than your safety,” objected Sirius.

“Winning the war is more important than _anyone’s_ individual safety.”

 _Not yours_ , thought Sirius. _Not yours or Harry’s_.

“You would have done the same,” added Remus.

“Yeah, but…” _I don’t matter_ , thought Sirius.

“You’re not more dispensable,” said Remus sharply before Sirius could finish.

“Debatable,” Sirius disagreed. “So…got any more exciting dates planned?” he asked masochistically to change to subject.

“Not in the immediate future,” replied Remus.

“Tonks would probably love it if you cooked something like this for her,” Sirius muttered.

“I imagine that would send her the wrong message.”

Sirius abruptly looked up. Remus was staring at him.

“How so?” he asked.

“I don’t think it would be very kind to jerk her around,” said Remus. “Or rather, she made that rather clear and I wholeheartedly agree with her.”

“Wait. You’re not together?” asked Sirius in shock.

“We already discussed this last night,” said Remus with a pained smile.

“We…we did?”

“You were rather indignant,” informed Remus.

“I was?”

“Quite defensive of my honor in fact,” said Remus.

“I—uh…” Sirius felt somewhat mortified. _What exactly had he said while he was drunk? What had he given away? Did Remus know? Was he…he wasn’t pranking him right now…was he?_

Remus didn’t do things like that anymore…did he?

Sirius examined his friend carefully and concluded that he wouldn’t put it past him. They _were_ both Marauders. It didn’t matter that Remus had grown up to be a bit more responsibly minded than he had, you don’t just go losing your inner nature completely.

Uh oh.

“Um, what else did I say?” Sirius braced himself for a humiliating answer.

“Oh, just a bit about drunk hippogriffs getting tied to taffrails,” replied Remus. “It was quite illuminating.”

“Hm, yeah. I suppose that sounds like me,” muttered Sirius. “…Anything else?”

Remus took a sip of tea and then a bite of baked beans. “Oh, a few other things possibly,” he said elusively.

 _Oh shite_ , thought Sirius. _I definitely said something. He knows, he knows, he knows_.

Remus’s face gave away _nothing_. But Sirius knew him too well. He was siting on something major, and totally enjoying it.

What should he do? He could press a confrontation or he could fail to take the bait and let everything drop.

It was tempting to take the cowardly way out and change the topic. But he was a Gryffindor, dammit, and this was _Moony_ and he would probably lose his mind wondering if he didn’t find out.

He took a fortifying gulp of coffee, letting the warm porcelain in his hands steady his nerves.

“Elaborate, please.”

“Oh, you just postulated on my amazing werewolf stamina,” said Remus calmly. “Seemed to think I could keep my ah, _recreational activities_ , going all night.”

“Oh,” said Sirius. He said a silent prayer that the stove might spontaneously burst into flames and burn the house down so he could abandon their conversation after all.

“I clarified of course that my date hadn’t required that as such,” continued Remus, carefully slicing his sausage and tomato up into ridiculously neat bite sized pieces.

“Good,” said Sirius weakly.

“Which of course lead to my disclosure that Dora and I are finished,” announced Remus.

“I’m sorry about that,” muttered Sirius. He wasn’t of course—it just seemed like the expected thing to say.

“I’m not,” said Remus brightly. “Especially considering that you offered your services to be her immediate replacement.”

“I—I _did_?” Sirius set his mug down and leaned back in his chair, hoping that maybe it would gain him an improved perspective on this complete and utter mess that was his social skills. “I propositioned you?”

Remus nodded. “Your confession was incredibly heart wrenching. I was very touched.”

“I…uh….” Sirius tried desperately to remember. How could he do something that monumental and then completely _forget it_?!

Well. At least Remus wasn’t freaking out.

Unless he actually was, and was doing a good job covering it up. Remus was terribly good at covering things up.

_Shite!!_

“I am never drinking again,” he muttered to himself in consternation. “So…” he said, picking up his fork and anxiously fiddling with it. “What did, uh, what did you say to all these, um, revelations?”

“Nothing,” said Remus calmly.

“Nothing?”

“Well,” said Remus, taking another sip of tea. “It’s hard to reply considering you didn’t actually do any of that. Terribly disappointing, really.”

Sirius found himself gaping again. “What? You…” he started. “You mean I….”

“I left myself _wide_ open for it too,” sighed Remus regretfully. “Practically handed you an engraved invitation. You didn’t say a _word_.”

“Wait,” Sirius continued to garble. “Wait, wait. You….”

“Sure hope I wasn’t reading you wrong,” said Remus with a wry smile. “I expect that would make things a bit awkward.”

“You’re telling me that you set me up to make a move on you,” Sirius clarified, “and you’re disappointed that I didn’t follow through? That’s what you’re telling me, right?”

“Well, I can’t really blame you, you were drunk,” said Remus. “But you’re not drunk right now, are you?”

Sirius gulped. Was that a hint of nervousness he detected in Remus’s voice? Was this even real? Remus wouldn’t be harsh enough to carry a joke on this far, would he?

Surely not.

Right?

_Right?_

“Quite sober,” Sirius confirmed. “Quite, quite, sober.”

“Good,” said Remus. He got up and walked around to Sirius’s side of the table, leaning over him. “Feel free to contradict me any time,” he murmured a few inches away from Sirius’s face.

“Why the bloody hell would I want to do that?”

Remus’s face cracked into a grin and his eyes lit up with hope. “Good answer, Padfoot,” he whispered before leaning in to kiss him.

Sirius immediately reached out and grabbed Remus’s shoulders, afraid that if he didn’t anchor himself the moment would evaporate and he’d find that the whole thing had been a drunken hallucination.

It was definitely not a hallucination.

Remus’s shoulders were solid and warm beneath his fingers. His cheeks were slightly rough with just the slightest hint of stubble. His lips were soft and not in the least bit hesitant. He tasted like milky tea and tomato and Sirius was _gone_.

Sirius let out a totally undignified needy whine and tried to pull them closer together. Which probably wasn’t the best idea since Remus was somewhat unsteadily hovering over him. Remus wobbled a bit but didn’t lose his balance. He yanked Sirius up so that they could properly meld together.

Remus’s arms slid down his back and wrapped around his waist. Sirius pressed into him, fiercely grabbing him back.

He hadn’t been with anyone since before getting sent to Azkaban. But even back then it had never been like _this_. Remus felt perfect, every inch of him radiating a comforting familiarity and sense of belonging. Sirius had known he wanted this, but still, the overwhelming sense of rightness caught him off-guard.

 _How the bloody hell did I survive for 37 years without kissing Moony_ , he thought in a daze.

Remus was apparently having a similar thought, going by how urgently he was kissing him. Sirius eagerly reciprocated; letting his hands rise up to tangle in Remus’s hair while he sucked on his bottom lip, exploring his best friend’s mouth with his teeth and tongue.

“Bloody _brilliant_ ,” he gasped when they finally broke apart.

“Well put,” agreed Remus breathlessly.

“We should have done that sooner.”

“I’ve wanted to since we were fourteen,” admitted Remus.

“What— _that long_?” asked Sirius in surprise.

“Maybe longer,” said Remus.

“ _Blimey_ Moony, I wish I’d known.”

“Didn’t think you’d be interested,” said Remus matter-of-factly. He dragged a hand down Sirius’s side and traced along the jut of his hipbone. “Would you have been?”

“I—I honestly don’t know,” confessed Sirius. “If I’d known it would feel like this you bet I would have. But who knows. I was a bit of an idiot back then.”

“Still are,” snorted Remus. “But I happen to like that about you.”

“Lucky me,” said Sirius before getting cut off by another kiss.

“So,” he added, after Remus reluctantly pulled away again. “I seem to recall you saying something about having amazing werewolf stamina? I’m very interested in further exploring that concept.”

Remus broke into laughter. “That was strictly _your_ assumption, for the record.”

“Well, we should probably test it out to see if I was right.”

“Not in the kitchen though,” said Remus with a smile.

“No,” agreed Sirius. “Not this time, anyway.” He laced his fingers with Remus’s and tugged him towards the door.

They never did get around to finishing their breakfast that morning, but neither of them minded.

* * *

“Oh! You haven’t been introduced to Camellia yet!” Molly Weasley grabbed Sirius’s arm and dragged him over to a young woman with honey brown hair.

“Hello,” the young woman said amicably.

“Well Hello,” said Sirius enthusiastically. He swooped down and lifted Camellia’s hand to his lips. “You’re as lovely as the flower you were named for.”

Camellia blushed and giggled.

Behind them Remus rolled his eyes but neither Molly nor Camellia noticed.

“Molly tells me that you’re very into motorbikes,” said Camellia conversationally.

“Oh yes.” Sirius nodded. “Positively mad for them. I had to give mine up when I got arrested though. Haven’t gotten around to replacing it yet. I really ought to do something about that.”

“Arrested?” Camellia’s friendly smile faded a little. “Molly didn’t mention that.”

“Really? I wonder why not. Well you’ve certainly missed out on a _fascinating_ story then. We’ll have lots to talk about!”

Camellia took a very subtle step backwards.

“He was arrested for murder,” added Remus helpfully. “A whole bunch of people, completely incinerated. Ghastly business. One minute they were just standing there, the next: _poof_.” He mimed an explosion with his hands. “You probably read about it in the papers.”

“Oh,” she said, looking back and forth between Remus and Sirius with a frown. “You’re _that_ Sirius.”

“The one and only.” Sirius grinned and winked at her. “So, tell me, do you have any knitting patterns with motorbikes in them? That would make a splendid Christmas Jumper.”

“I—ah—no, I don’t think so. I would have to check though—why don’t I do that. I’ll just, be going now. To, ah. Check my patterns.”

Camellia scurried off and disappeared into the crowd of ladies socializing in Molly’s living room.

“Sirius,” said Molly disapprovingly. “Stop doing that!”

“What, asking about knitting patterns?” asked Sirius innocently. “But I thought this was a knitting club mixer.”

“You’re deliberately chasing away every girl I introduce to you.”

“I most certainly am _not_ ,” insisted Sirius. “I’m just being upfront with them, and honestly disclosing my authentic self.”

“There’s a time and place,” reproached Molly. “You should work on disclosing your less controversial traits first and saving the rest for after they’ve gotten to know you.”

“But where’s the fun in that?” asked Sirius cheerfully. “Hey I don’t think we’ve talked to that one yet.”

Molly sighed and led them over to another woman; this one had emerald green eyes and a dirty blonde bob.

“This is Maureen,” said Molly resignedly. “Maureen, this is Sirius.”

“Hello Sirius,” said Maureen brightly.

“Hello Maureen, darling,” replied Sirius. “So, you’ve been knitting for a long time?”

“Oh yes!” said Maureen. “I’ve been doing it since I was little. I knitted this dress!” She pointed to her outfit.

“Stunning!” praised Sirius. “You’re bloody fantastic. I bet you’re just the person who can give me advice.”

“I’m sure I can.” Maureen smiled broadly. “What do you need help with?”

“Well, I was just wondering, do you have any spells that will help keep your hands coordinated?” asked Sirius. “I’d love to learn but my motor skills just haven’t been up to snuff ever since I died.”

Maureen’s smile evaporated. “What?” she asked in confusion.

“I died,” Sirius repeated. He held up his hand to demonstrate the faint tremble to it. “See? I’ve been kind of messed up since it happened—don’t think I could hold a pair of knitting needles steady to save my life—er, my second life, so to speak. Dying was _murder_ on my coordination. Get it? Murder? Ha. I actually _was_ murdered, you know—by my cousin. It was dreadful, I definitely don’t recommend it.”

“Oh,” said Maureen. “Um. No. I don’t know any spells like that. Perhaps you should try a different hobby. Macramé perhaps? Yes, that might suit you better, you should try that. I don’t know anything about it though, so I can’t help you. I’ll just—I have to go over there now. Bye.”

Maureen excused herself and disappeared out of the room completely.

“Well, congratulations,” complained Molly. “You have now succeeded in alienating every single one of my friends. There’s no one left to introduce you to.”

“It shouldn’t have been that easy,” said Sirius.

“You made an effort.” Molly frowned. “You acted like you didn’t _want_ to meet a potential girlfriend!”

“Well, I didn’t particularly,” Sirius admitted.

“I don’t understand why not!” fretted Molly. “Aren’t you lonely?”

“Not in the slightest,” said Sirius with a grin. “Remus is really excellent company.”

He turned and yanked Remus closer, pulling him in to give a lengthy and passionate kiss.

“I suspect he wouldn’t especially appreciate it if I went and got a girlfriend,” he added happily as they broke away. “I’m already taken.”

“Extremely taken,” agreed Remus, possessively slinging his arm around Sirius’s shoulders.

Molly’s eyes had doubled in size and she was apparently having difficulty closing her mouth.

“Ah,” said Molly. She opened and closed her mouth again. “Well. Ah. Er, well then.”

She crossed her arms and huffed. “Well. Well, fine then! I see! Why did you even come to my party?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Sirius, pulling a stack of parchment out of his pocket. “I promised Hermione I’d hand out these flyers for her. She wants to recruit more knitters to make clothes for her house elf liberation front. I sort of owe her a couple of favors, considering it’s thanks to her I’m even standing here.”

He held up a flyer and waved it around in the air. “Oi!” he shouted over the din of people chatting. “Who here’s good at making tiny hats?”

* * *

Harry poked his head out of the fireplace and nervously glanced around.

“Sirius?” he ventured.

He received no answer and gingerly crawled out of the hearth, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. He hadn’t heard from his godfather since he’d last visited several days ago—which normally wouldn’t have been noteworthy, but considering that the last thing he’d said directly to Sirius had resulted (as calculated) in an expression of pure betrayal—well, he couldn’t help suspecting that Sirius’s silence was deliberate.

He’d felt pretty bad saying what he had in the first place. But Sirius was stubborn, and Harry knew a thing or two about being stubborn himself. And it was easy to guess what sort of push Sirius would need to galvanize him into actually _doing something_. Harry had only said exactly the sort of thing that would have motivated himself.

But had it worked? Or had he only hurt Sirius for no end? Surely if Sirius had actually taken some sort of action Harry would have heard about it by now?

Or was Sirius too mad to even tell him if he’d actually taken Harry’s advice?

“Sirius?” he called out again, climbing down the stairs.

“In the kitchen.” Harry detected Lupin’s voice calling up from the house’s lowest level.

 _Well, whatever Sirius did or didn’t do, at least Lupin wasn’t scared off_ , thought Harry encouragingly. _I knew he wouldn’t be_.

He felt so relieved by that revelation that Harry had almost completely let his guard down by the time he walked through the kitchen door, and as a result didn’t notice the plate flying right at his head.

“Gah!” yelped Harry as antique porcelain exploded against the plaster a few inches from his ear.

“Look sharp!” muttered Sirius, tossing another plate at the wall.

“What the devil?” said Harry, staggering to the side.

“You don’t need to break them first,” said Lupin with a tired sigh. “We can transfigure them intact.”

“It is absolutely _essential_ that I break them first,” announced Sirius, aiming his next toss dangerously close to Lupin’s head this time. “I need the therapeutic benefit.”

Lupin ducked and brushed bits of shattered pottery off the counter.

“Would you like some pumpkin juice?” he asked Harry good naturedly, turning a glass upside down to shake debris out if it.

“Er, no thanks,” said Harry, eyeing the broken shards that fell out of the glass. “Um, why are you breaking dishes?”

“We decided to transfigure them so that we wouldn’t have to stare at the Black family motto every time we had dinner,” explained Lupin. He pointed his wand at one of the piles of pottery fragments and caused them to knit back together. The repaired plate was missing the gilt coat of arms, which had been replaced by a Delft Blue design featuring a dog. “Much better,” he mumbled, adding the plate to a stack on the counter.

“The old ones ruined my appetite,” said Sirius, chucking a soup bowl at the ceiling.

“Well, I’m glad you’re making yourself more comfortable,” said Harry, trying to ease into a conversation. Sirius had barely acknowledged his presence since he arrived, which wasn’t a good sign.

“Trying to make this place comfortable is like the burden of Sisyphus,” groused Sirius.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” asked Harry.

“Oh, I think you’ve done quite enough.” Sirius leveled Harry with a dark look.

Harry’s face fell. “Look, Sirius,” he said uneasily. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” replied Sirius sharply. “If you believe in something you should stick to your guns. You _did_ mean it, didn’t you?”

Harry squirmed a bit under Sirius’s intense gaze. “Yeah,” he sighed. “But I was unnecessarily mean about it. So I’m sorry about that.”

“You _were_ a prat about it,” Sirius agreed.

Harry guiltily nodded.

“ _But_ ,” added Sirius, “I’m certainly not sorry you were.” His grim expression cracked into a wide grin and he reached over and caught Lupin’s hand in his. Lupin smiled affectionately back at him. “You were right, after all.”

Harry glanced back and forth between Sirius and Lupin and began to smile himself.

“Wait,” he asked. “Are you two…?”

Both Sirius and Lupin nodded.

“That’s brilliant!” exclaimed Harry sincerely.

“I certainly think so,” agreed Lupin.

“Extremely brilliant,” confirmed Sirius.

“Hermione will be glad,” Harry added.

“Yes, I’m quite sure she’ll have an opinion on it,” agreed Sirius. “And I think perhaps I might need to have a conversation with her about discretion, because I rather suspect that you did not deduce the current state of things entirely on your own, did you?”

Harry’s guilty expression was answer enough. “She just wanted to help.”

“Which I have to admit she did,” said Sirius with a sigh. “So I guess I can’t complain to much.”

“He’ll complain anyway,” commented Lupin in a loud stage whisper to Harry.

Harry laughed in agreement.

“You bet I will,” confirmed Sirius. He pushed a stack of salad plates towards his godson with a grin. “So,” he said cheerfully. “Want to help break some dishes?”

* * *

“Ah, _there_ you are.”

Remus looked up from his book to find Sirius hovering in the doorway. He was dressed for bed and looked mildly put out.

“This _is_ my room,” he felt inclined to point out.

“Was,” said Sirius. “It _was_ your room. It doesn’t have to stay that way. Mine’s bigger. Your stuff would fit, you know. You weren’t planning on sleeping here, were you?”

Remus was tempted to mention that he actually _liked_ this room, and perhaps Sirius should be offering to move his own stuff in here instead. But the truth of the matter was that Sirius had a point: this was Sirius’s house and Remus had never considered this room truly his own anyway because he was merely a transitory guest at 12 Grimmauld Place. Only, apparently he wasn’t just a guest anymore. And apparently Sirius most certainly did not consider Remus’s status as _transitory_. It had only been a few days since their relationship had substantially shifted but Sirius was acting like they’d been carrying on this way for ages, and would inevitably be carrying on this way for _forever_ and the easy confidence he had in the permanence of their new arrangement was a bit difficult for Remus to wrap his mind around. It didn’t quite seem real that he could be this lucky and he didn’t dare take it for granted. While he certainly wanted to fall into the easy complacency that Sirius had adopted, he couldn’t help waiting for the other shoe to drop. How long did he have until Sirius snapped out of it and decided he’d made a mistake? When would the novelty wear off and Sirius realize that he preferred women after all?

(How long did they have until one of them _died_?)

“I didn’t want to assume,” he said quietly, shutting his book.

“You can always assume,” said Sirius. “Unless you don’t _want_ to. You can just tell me if you’d rather sleep alone….” There was a slightly haunted look in his eyes, as if he actually thought Remus was going to say that he would. Perhaps Sirius wasn’t actually feeling as complacent as Remus had inferred.

“No,” Remus quickly interjected. “I’ve done enough of that to last a lifetime, I think.”

“Me too,” agreed Sirius. The tension that had briefly been on his face melted into an easy smile.

Remus got up and made his way to the door. “Your bed _is_ more comfortable,” he said teasingly.

“Only because _I’m_ in it,” Sirius retorted.

Remus snorted but didn’t contradict him.

“Of course,” Sirius added, catching Remus’s arm as he attempted to squeeze past. “I’m not opposed to trying out other beds, so long as _you’re_ in them.”

“So suddenly this room is good enough?” Remus laughed.

“It’s closer.”

Remus was going to make some sort of snarky retort, but his train of thought got completely derailed as he caught the heated way that Sirius was looking at him.

“Er, yes,” he said as his brain short-circuited.

Luckily, making conversation wasn’t really something that Sirius seemed overly interested in. He leaned into Remus, trapping him against the doorframe. Remus let his eyes slide shut for a moment, narrowing his attention to the sensation of Sirius’s body flush against him, the way he could feel the subtle rise and fall of Sirius’s chest as he breathed, and the warmth radiating through his thin pajama top. He smelled like oakmoss and old wood and maybe a hint of beeswax. Remus reached up and slid his hands up Sirius’s back, mapping out the planes of muscles and protruding bones (which had become much less prominent in the months of recovery Sirius had had since Azkaban, but still hadn’t been completely erased.) He brushed his fingers up along Sirius’s neck and let them thread through his hair, recalling just how many times over the years he’d imagined doing exactly this. Even after nearly a week of being allowed to indulge, it still didn’t quite feel real that he was allowed. But there was nothing fake or forced about the warm looks Sirius had been giving him since this started, or the way he could feel Sirius’s body physically reacting to his touch.

He felt his lips quirk up a bit at the memory of some of the more intimate things they had been getting up to over the past few days, although the train of thought was quickly startled back to the present by a very wet pressure swiping up his own neck.

“Ack!” he gasped involuntarily, his eyes snapping open. “Padfoot! That tickles!”

“Sorry,” said Sirius (not actually sounding overly sorry.) “I’ve been wanting to do that for a couple of days. Couldn’t resist.”

“Did you just lick my neck?” asked Remus.

“Er, yeah?” answered Sirius, sounding a little more sheepish now. “That not okay?”

Remus pondered the question for a moment. “Er, no, it’s alright. I just wasn’t expecting it. You can try that again if you want.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” confirmed Remus, slightly dubiously.

In lieu of saying anything else, Sirius leaned forward and dragged his tongue along Remus’s collarbone. This time the pace was much slower, with a deliberate intent behind it and none of the ticklishness. Remus tilted his head back, granting permission to keep going so Sirius traced up his throat and along his jaw. He caught Remus’s earlobe in his mouth for a moment, briefly sucking on it before dipping his tongue into the hollow behind Remus’s ear. The light gust of Sirius’s breath against his ear tickled again, but in a good way this time, a way that made Remus’s insides feel tight, along with other parts of his anatomy.

“Better,” he gasped, as Sirius pulled away. “That was much better. You should definitely keep practicing that.”

“Absolutely,” Sirius agreed, but this time instead of ending at Remus’s ear he licked up to Remus’s mouth. Remus immediately opened it and invited his tongue in, letting it tangle together with his own, sucking on it and plunging into Sirius’s mouth in return. Sirius pushed him harder into the doorframe, and Remus wasn’t even sure which one of them started moving first but their hips were grinding together in tandem. He could feel them both growing hard as they moved, and he encouraged it by sliding his knee between Sirius’s legs. In response Sirius’s fingers tightened where they’d been gripping Remus’s shoulders, but then they released so that he could run them up and down Remus’s sides, dipping lower with each pass, ending with his fingers ghosting along the elastic band of Remus’s pajama bottoms. Remus angled his hips up, spurring Sirius to slip his hand beneath the elastic. It hadn’t taken long for his erection to become achingly hard and he jerked as Sirius’s fingers closed around it. But the desired friction was brief, as Sirius’s hand kept moving, tracing the junction of his legs and torso, brushing against his inner thighs, teasingly circling around just about everywhere except the parts that urgently wanted attention, driving Remus crazy.

His entire body was thrumming with the hot tension of how much he _needed_ Sirius to keep touching him, to touch him more and harder, and Merlin, why did they still have all their clothes on anyway? He set about fixing that, messily struggling with the buttons of Sirius’s shirt. He apparently wasn’t doing a very good job at that though, as Sirius’s touching abruptly stopped as he pulled his hand away in favor of divesting his shirt himself. Remus couldn’t help letting out a bit of a disappointed whine at the loss of contact and Sirius grinned in response.

They stumbled back towards the bed, scrambling to get both of their clothes off as quickly as possible. Remus pushed Sirius down and climbed over him, penning the shorter man in with his arms. His body was urging him to thrust against him, to return to the frantic grinding and take things further. But he hesitated, forcing himself to slow down so he could take in the moment. He’d never thought he’d ever find himself with Sirius like this; that he’d get to touch his best friend in all the ways that he’d longed to over the years. He certainly wasn’t about to take for granted that this would last (but good Merlin, he hoped it did,) and so he didn’t want to rush things.

Sirius’s chest was splashed with a tracery of faded blue ink and Remus reached down to outline the prominent amalgamation symbol in the center of it. It had always struck Remus as a bit of an odd choice for a tattoo, considering that Sirius had never seemed especially interested in alchemy, but he hadn’t really felt comfortable asking about his remnants of prison life. They’d been talking a lot over the last days though, and any taboos that had remained between them had been effectively dismantled, leaving all conversation topics fair game now.

“Why’d you get this one?” he finally asked.

Sirius snorted. “You’ve got me lying under you completely naked and the _tattoo_ is what you’re interested in?”

“I’m interested in _lots_ of things,” Remus assured. He let his hand drift south, teasing Sirius with the promise of more touching.

“I’m sure you are,” replied Sirius with a smirk. His face turned more serious though as he contemplated the question. “I got it for irony, mostly,” he admitted. “It’s the symbol for combining things, you know, basically means _to unite_ , or whatever, right? And I’ve always functioned best in groups. I’m a people person, not a loner; I like to belong to things, like the Marauders, obviously, that’s when I was happiest. But in Azkaban I was pretty much kept in solitary confinement most of the time. So I got that basically as a reminder of how much my life had gone to complete and utter shite. I was trapped outside of my element.”

“Oh,” said Remus, his mood sobering.

“I think a lot of the other inmates assumed it meant I had allegiance to the Death Eaters or Grindelwald’s Army, or something dark like that, you know. But it really just meant that I was still loyal to the Marauders.”

“I was the only other Marauder left at that point,” Remus observed. “At least that you actually knew was still alive.”

“Yeah,” Sirius agreed. “I missed you.”

“It was mutual,” said Remus.

“I’ve figured that out by now,” said Sirius, grinning again.

“So why’d you get the other ones?” Remus pressed.

“Thought they looked cool,” said Sirius simply.

Remus raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Nah,” said Sirius. “But it would take a while to explain them all and I’m _way_ more interested in doing _other things_.”

“I can’t complain with that,” Remus agreed. “Another time, then.”

Sirius reached up and yanked Remus down so that he was lying on top of him. He wound his arms around him, pressing them tightly together and rocked their bodies together. They went back to kissing and the pace quickly became frenzied and heated. Remus slipped a hand between them, wrapping his fingers around both of their lengths and stroked them together. Sirius moaned into his mouth and thrust into Remus’s grip. The combined pressure of his fingers and _Sirius’s cock_ sent pressure building in his abdomen and it took a lot of willpower for him to eventually stop before the stroking put him completely over the edge.

“ _Moony_ ,” Sirius whined at the interruption.

“Thought you might want to do more than just that?” Remus queried.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Sirius agreed, although he continued to shift against him, seeking continuation of the contact.

Remus rolled off of him and fumbled around in the bedside drawer for the jar of salve which had been a fairly recent addition to his nightstand (and was seeing quite a lot of use.)

“Which way do you want to do this?” he asked. It was sort of embarrassing to have to stop in the middle of what they were doing and have a _discussion_ and _make decisions_. But their relationship was too new to have any sort of set routine, and they were still experimenting with each other.

“Don’t care,” said Sirius easily. “I like anything so long as it involves touching you.”

 _Oh Merlin_. The things that hearing those words come from Sirius did to him…

“I like it both ways too,” agreed Remus.

They stared at each other for a few heartbeats and then Sirius rolled his eyes and snatched the salve out of Remus’s hand.

“You’re taking entirely too long to make up your mind,” he stated simply, pushing Remus backwards. Remus let himself be guided and opened his legs so that Sirius could settle between them.

Sirius unscrewed the jar and coated his fingers with the salve. His eyes briefly flicked up to Remus, checking to make sure he was actually okay with this course of action. (He was _more_ than okay with it.) Remus smiled encouragingly and Sirius took that as his cue to begin working a finger inside of him. Remus shifted to adjust to the intrusion, moving around until it stopped feeling strange and began feeling _good_. He pressed back against Sirius as he thrust into him. The mere thought that this was _Sirius_ doing this to him turned him on almost as much as the physical sensations themselves. As did the memory of what it had been like when their positions were reversed, that he knew exactly what it felt like to do this to Sirius in return….

Sirius added another finger, and when Remus squirmed a bit he wrapped his other hand around his cock and stroked him. His head dipped down and he kissed Remus’s stomach, then lower, nosing along his pelvis and leg. The strokes of his hand dragged down, alternating from his cock to caressing his balls, then back, and _Merlin_ , Remus was losing his ability to think straight. His breathing turned ragged and his hands dug into the sheets as he rocked into and against Sirius’s attentions.

“Not going to last long,” Remus warned. “You should probably—”

Sirius stalled before he even finished the warning. “Yeah?” he asked. “Ready?”

Remus just vigorously nodded.

Sirius didn’t waste any time in coating himself and pushing in.

Remus gasped as he was stretched and filled and so very utterly _connected_ to Sirius.

“Alright?” Sirius checked.

Remus nodded, biting his lip. And then Sirius began to _move_ and Remus moved back and Sirius was all the while looking at him with an expression of such intense possessive desire that every nerve in Remus’s body felt on fire. He watched as Sirius’s hair swung about his face with his frenetic thrusting and sweat began to bead on his forehead.

The tension in his body began to build and in what seemed no time at all, the pressure crested and he was completely coming undone.

Sirius picked up his pace as Remus clenched around him and did not last much longer, collapsing over top of him in a breathless jumble.

“Bloody incredible,” he murmured as he pulled out and shifted so that he was lying next to Remus instead of on top of him.

“You’re telling me,” Remus agreed. He grabbed his wand and vanished the mess with an easy wave before pulling the blanket over top of them. He turned on his side and wrapped an arm around Sirius, who nudged closer to erase the small gap between them.

“Night, Moony,” said Sirius with a lazy yawn.

“Goodnight Padfoot,” he said softly.

Remus was still smiling when he finally fell asleep, lulled out of wakefulness by the steady rhythm of Sirius’s breathing.

* * *

“Wow,” said Harry, looking around the transformed row house. “You’ve really done a lot of work here. It’s barely recognizable.”

Sirius beamed as he walked Harry, Ron, and Hermione through the newly renovated rooms of 12 Grimmauld Place.

“It’s still only temporary,” Sirius explained. “We’re going to bail as soon as the war is over and this place isn’t needed.”

“Find a nice cottage outside of the city,” Remus added brightly.

“Very far out. With lots of grounds for running around,” Sirius agreed. “But so long as we’re slogging it out here a bit longer we figured we’d do a bit more than just clean things up.”

“Is there even anything original still left?” asked Hermione in wonder as she took in the clean modern décor and bright colors.

“Oh, most of it _is_ still original,” Sirius laughed. “We just transfigured everything to look less depressing.”

“Threw out anything cursed though,” commented Remus. “Or silver.” He rubbed at a recent scar on his arm where he’d had an unfortunate incident with a silver candelabra overbalancing when he’d opened a jammed armoire.

“You haven’t seen the best part though,” added Sirius, herding everyone to a closed bedroom door.

“Isn’t this Remus’s room?” asked Harry as they swung the door open.

The stacks of academic books that had previously filled the room were gone though. In their place was a much smaller stack of Quidditch magazines and a rather ornate albeit empty birdcage.

“I moved my things,” explained Remus. “We thought you’d get better use out of this room than I would, considering…” he trailed off and coughed somewhat embarrassedly.

“Assuming you want to stay around a bit,” Sirius added hastily. “I know that you still need to live with your aunt and uncle of course. But perhaps for _part_ of your holidays….”

“Yes!” Exclaimed Harry, before Sirius could even finish. “Yes, absolutely yes, when can I move in?” He grinned and grabbed his godfather in a hug. His grin began to falter though as he broke away.

“What’s wrong?” asked Sirius, immediately picking up on Harry’s troubled expression. “It’s not to your liking? You’re welcome to pick a different room…I mean technically the whole house is yours, isn’t it? You could have any of them….”

“No,” said Harry quickly. “This one is brilliant. It’s just…” he shot a sideways glance at Hermione and Ron, who mirrored his look of discomfort.

“Just what?” asked Sirius, watching as the three teenagers apparently exchanged some sort of silent discussion with their eyes.

“Well…” said Harry shiftily. “It’s just….” He trailed off again, clearly hesitant to actually tell Sirius what he was thinking, which did not sit terribly well with him.

“What’s wrong?” Sirius asked more urgently.

“I just don’t want to get your hopes up that I’ll be able to be here a lot,” Harry finally admitted.

“Well, I know that school takes up most of your year,” responded Sirius, trying to sound light although he suspected that Harry wasn’t alluding to school at all. “And you have other family obligations….”

“That’s not it,” Harry admitted. “I’ve got…” he glanced again at Hermione, as if searching for a cue as to whether he should continue. She nodded faintly. “I’ve got a sort of _project_ to work on. From Dumbledore. And I’m not really sure yet, but I sort of suspect it might start interfering with school and stuff. And I’m just not sure how much I’m going to be around in the near future.”

Sirius stiffened. “A project? From Dumbledore?” he asked in a strained voice.

“Yeah,” conceded Harry. “You know, to stop Voldemort.”

“I know. I can imagine _exactly_ the sort of project that Dumbledore would ask of you,” said Sirius darkly. “And I say no way! Tell him to have someone else do it.”

“I can’t!” exclaimed Harry. “It _has_ to be me.”

“Of course it doesn’t!” objected Sirius. “Look, I know that Dumbledore is quite excellent at convincing people that the fate of the world rests in their hands. He pulls that sort of thing all the time. He did it to _Moony_ with his horrible missions to the werewolves.” Sirius grimaced and jerked a thumb towards Remus. “But the truth is it _doesn’t_. Someone else could have dealt with Greyback, and whatever it is that he’s expecting of you most certainly can be done by someone who’s already out of school and not throwing their future away.”

“Sirius,” said Harry in a voice that very clearly conveyed ‘this is exactly why I wasn’t going to tell you.’ “It really _does_ have to be me. It’s not just Dumbledore who said so. There’s also the prophecy….”

“Complete rubbish,” dismissed Sirius. “There are thousands of prophecies that never come true. It’s dangerous to put too much stock in the damn things.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Voldemort thinks it is, that’s all that counts. He’s going to come after me, so I _have_ to go after him first. I don’t really have a choice in the matter, Sirius. It’s going to be me or him.”

“Well then. It doesn’t have to be you _alone_ though, does it?”

“It won’t be me alone,” Harry assured him. “I have Ron and Hermione.”

“And me and Remus,” said Sirius forcefully.

“Absolutely,” agreed Remus immediately. “We’ll come with you. We can help.”

“I don’t think I should tell you about it though,” argued Harry. “It’s secret.”

“So don’t tell us the details,” said Remus immediately. “Just let us come and help when you need it.”

“What do you think?” Harry turned to Hermione.

“Well…” mused Hermione. “Sirius knows a lot of really useful stuff. He helped me improve a ton with my dueling. And Professor Lupin is the best person we know at defensive magic. It probably would help us a lot if they were involved.”

Harry then looked to Ron, who nodded in agreement.

“Alright then…” he said somewhat hesitantly. “Alright,” he continued, a little more surely. “You can help. If I have to go away, you can come with.”

“You _bet_ we’re coming with,” Sirius verified. “Whatever it is that you need to do, we’re going to make sure it goes okay. We’re going to make sure that _everything_ is okay.”

Harry looked up into the unwavering confidence in his godfather’s eyes. He turned and caught the same assuredness reflected in Remus’s. He glanced at his two best friends, recalling every horrible situation that they’d helped him fight his way out of. And he knew that they were right.

Everything _was_ going to be okay.


End file.
